Tauranga City Council is being challenged on the way the wider community is being excluded from submitting on plans to build a Countdown supermarket at Bureta Park.

The council initially stated the process would be publicly notified but has now decided on a non-notified process restricting the submissions and hearings process to the 97 surrounding landowners.

Submissions on the proposed $20million supermarket on the current Bureta Park Motor Inn site on the corner of Vale Street and Bureta Road close at 5pm today.

City council planner Brad Bellamy says it is a limited notified process as that is what Countdown supermarket owner Progressive Enterprises applied for.

'They lodged the application on a limited notified basis, they believed that they could identify who the affected interested persons were,” says Brad.

'That there were no effects of a more than minor nature, which the act requires for it to be publicly notified, so that is the process that we are dictated to through the Resource Management Act. They were able to meet those tests and that was the decision that was reached.”

Tauranga real estate agent Stuart Gooch says the council can choose at any time to change its mind if an application should have been publicly notified and was not.

In addition, Stuart says the development is totally contrary to the city council's recently completed District Plan review where the council moved to seriously limit further commercial encroachments into residential land in the city.

'The council have said they want no more commercial development into Tauranga, they want no land to be commercialised,” says Stuart.

'We have already got one of the largest areas in proportion of commercial real estate in New Zealand. They have shut down any further commercial development of residential land until 2016. The ink isn't dry on it.”

The site of the Buretta Park Motor Inn, formerly the Otumoetai Licensing Trust is zoned residential and has long term connections with the wider community, not just the people who live next to it.

The planned Countdown supermarket in Bureta.

Stuart says because so many people have been involved, it makes the council move to make it a limited notification, and allowing only the immediate neighbours to make submissions, 'a cheap shot”.

'When you change from residential this is a major change that must have effects on the wider population and need to be considered,” says Stuart.

Stuart says it is not just the immediate neighbours affected by the proposed supermarket, it will impact on retailers at the Bureta Road shops and Cherrywood Shopping Centre, none of whom are able to make a submission.

A total of 25 submissions on the planned project had been received by Tauranga City Council by 5pm on Thursday from immediate neighbours, some of whom have indicated they wish to be heard.

A submissions hearing will be held, but the wider public will not be able to make submissions, though there is the ability for people to be represented by an eligible submitter.

Residents in Ngatai Road, Vale Street properties opposite the planned site and certain Bureta Road residents are eligible to submit.

The application and all paperwork associated with the application is online on the city council website.