A discount supermarket has announced when it will open its new £9million store.

Aldi will welcome its first customers to its new branch at Neats Court, Queenborough, in April 2024.

The Aldi in Sheerness town centre will close and is set to be replaced by Home Bargains.

Up to 40 new jobs will be created by the new store and 30 staff from the Sheerness store will transfer over.

An Aldi spokesperson told KentOnline that construction for the new store is “progressing well” and “will enable local people to shop and save closer to home”.

The exact opening date in April next year has not been announced.

The new £9m complex is opposite the Queenborough retail park and will be a third larger than the existing premises with 134 parking spaces - 59 more than in Sheerness.

It will also have new cycle and pedestrian links.

The store was granted permission in December last year by Swale council’s planning committee but it has not been straightforward for Aldi.

The German retailer began talks with the council about a new store in 2017 and submitted plans in June 2019 because it said its 15-year-old branch in Sheerness, between Pepys Avenue and Millennium Way, was "no longer fit for purpose".

It was given the go-ahead in November 2020 and construction was about to start when rival Tesco had the permission quashed in the High Court the following October.

By then, Aldi had already put its Sheerness store in Millennium Way on the market for £2 million.

Swale council was then recommended to refuse the resubmitted plans in November last year after the planning officer Paul Gregory said the closing of the current shop would have a detrimental effect on the town.

Aldi warned the council that its existing site was too small and would be closed even if its plans for the new store were rejected.

Sittingbourne and Sheppey MP Gordon Henderson had voiced his concern that “turning down the Aldi application, which incidentally has already been approved once, will have an impact on jobs and the wider Sheppey community”.

He said turning down the application would be "illogical" because the retailer had made it clear it was quitting Sheerness and that Home Bargains would have a "positive impact" on the town and the Island "as a whole".

In December, councillors voted by 14 to one in favour of allowing the resubmitted plans.