A WAITROSE and Aldi will open on the same site for the first in the UK at Oxfordshire's newest retail park.

Faringdon Park, on the edge of town by the A420 junction, will start opening its doors in the next six months.

The Waitrose and Aldi between them will create more than 125 jobs and a Costa Coffee on the site will employ ten more.

The drive-though Costa is set to open by the end of the year followed by the supermarkets in Spring 2017.

Wantage MP Ed Vaizey officially christened the Park Road site on Friday in a ceremony with the mayor and other local dignitaries.

Vale of White Horse District Council member for Faringdon Roger Cox said he hoped the retail park would help "draw back" the 60 per cent of people in the town's "catchment area" who currently do their food shopping elsewhere.

He said: "If proof was ever needed that Faringdon is an important part of the Vale this is it.

"Attracting more people back to Faringdon will increase footfall for the entire town."

The centre will have parking for 180 cars and developer Avivia Investors has agreed to contribute £60,000 for local road improvements and other "infrastructure".

Independent shops in Faringdon Market Place also welcomed the new retail park.

Traders previously feared that the new Tesco on Park Road, which opened in 2013, could draw footfall out of the town centre.

But Peter Sharps, who has run Pat Thomas butchers for 12 years, said Tesco had not dented his trade at all.

He said: "The new Waitrose would definitely help the town: it will bring people from out of Faringdon and they will hopefully come into the town centre.

"Competition is a good thing – Tesco hasn't really affected us because all our meat is British and we have good regular customers who stick with us."

Faringdon Chamber of Commerce has worked with Aviva and persuaded the developer to put up maps at the retail park directing people to independent shops in the market place and other local attractions.

Chamber member Lesley Holdship, who runs Hare in the Wood delicatessen in the market place, said: "I hope it might bring people from outlying villages into Faringdon but I don't think it will make them come into the town centre.

"The Tesco certainly hasn't done that."

But Mrs Holdship said she was not worried about the new park taking existing shoppers away from the market place.

She added: "My footfall has only increased in the past four years – I think Faringdon is very locally-orientated."

The town's population increased to more than 7,000 in recent years with the construction of the 428-home Folly Park estate north of Park Road.