“Unacceptable” plans to make deliveries to a city centre supermarket later at night have been refused by St Albans district council (SADC).

Morrisons on Hatfield Road applied to extend the hours delivery lorries can arrive from between 7am and 10pm, to 7am through to 10.30pm - just half an hour later.

But residents living near the store argued it would cause too much disturbance while they were trying to sleep.

One Castle Road resident said residents “deserve some hours of quiet in the morning and evenings”.

Morrisons initially wanted to pull back the hours, to make it 6am to 10am, but amended the proposal.

Another resident said: “These are very noisy, very large vehicles operating in an otherwise quiet residential area. The earlier hours proposed will mean relatively little to Morrisons, but will make a big difference to residents who are likely to be disturbed by the noise and will probably make the difference between lorries arriving when residents are asleep or awake.”

A woman described the current deliveries as unbearable: “Lorries are reversing with the loud beeping noise, engines left idling and lorries are parked in Sutton Road regularly impeding traffic and causing an obstruction. The noise late at night is unacceptable.”

The application was refused by SADC after being called in by Cllr Anthony Rowlands to a planning (development control) committee central meeting on November 6. Similar requests were refused in 2006 and 2015 because they too would have a detrimental impact on the neighbours.

Cllr Rowlands is glad the application was refused: “Morrisons need to remember that their site is located within a dense residential area. Repeated attempts to extend delivery hours into their yard on Sutton Road have rightly been opposed by residents on Castle Road and Sutton Road who have to put up with the disturbance of large lorries coming and going.

“Surely Morrisons can afford some extra staff during the day-time so that delivery activities related to the site do not creep forward towards dawn or drift late into the night?”

A Morrisons spokeswoman said they were disappointed: “We wanted to amend our delivery times to make sure our shelves were fully stocked first thing in the morning for our customers.”