ESSO have been given temporary permission to extend their fuel delivery times at the Lanehouse Rocks Road site in Weymouth.

The garage had been allowed deliveries outside the originally agreed 7am to 10pm hours during the pandemic as a result of Government legislation applying to all key deliveries. It had asked to extend the original hours with the ending of pandemic measures to allow greater flexibility for deliveries to the forecourt.

Dorset Council has now agreed a change to the original consent to allow fuel deliveries only from 5.30am until 10pm until January 12th 2022 to assess any possible impact on neighbours.

Deliveries to the associated shop, run by Tesco, will continue to be between 8am and 6pm with the whole site open for business from 6am until 11pm.

One neighbour to the garage had written to object to the change, saying: “This is a residential area and petrol trucks arriving outside people's homes at between 5am and 5.30am to deliver petrol is unacceptable. The Esso garage is already able to deliver right up until 10pm when the garage is a lot less busy. Please refuse this application and give our homes a little peace at such an early hour.”

Weymouth town councillors decided not to object to the change when its planning committee discussed the application earlier in the year.