RESIDENTS living on an Amesbury estate still don’t have a shop, despite being told it would already be up and running by now.

Developers Persimmon Homes and Js Bloor were required to provide the shop after a certain number of houses were built at Archer’s Gate.

That number has now been reached but Wiltshire Council’s southern area planning committee approved a variation to the legal agreement at its meeting in September, allowing the next stage of housing to go ahead before the shop is built.

Councillors did not want the developers to miss out on an affordable housing grant, which will only available if the houses are built by April 2010.

But the town council is now getting impatient with the county planning department.

Mayor Roger Fisher said: “This is getting beyond a joke.

“You hear one side from the developers then another from other people but we have definitely got to get the pressure onto the planning department.

“The interesting thing is the developers are only required to build a shell of a shop, but they are in negotiations to find someone to occupy it, which is a great benefit for us.”

The matter was discussed at a council meeting on Tuesday after two applications for more houses on the estate were brought to the attention of members.

Deputy mayor Margaret Strange criticised the sequence in which things are being carried out and said infrastructure should be provided first to support additional housing.

“I don’t think we should wait years and years for it to come along,” she said. “That is what’s happening here all the time in Amesbury.

“I am not objecting to the development, I just think we need the proper infrastructure to support it.”

Martin Miller, agent for the developers, said the application for the shop was submitted to the planning department on June 5, but they had not yet been given a decision.

He said work cannot start on the shop until a retailer agrees to run it, but no one is willing to agree until the planning permission is approved.

A council spokesman said a decision had not been given yet because of negotiations with the developers, but that it is expected soon.