Residents Keith McFarlane, who works for a housing agency, Grahame Heap, a retired company director, and Dennis Pocock all spoke in favour.

Jill Atkinson said she had spoken to many shopkeepers and found only one in favour. “This store is too big hence it has to be built outside of the ringroad,” she said. “Our town centre will be badly affected, you only have to go down the road to Brighouse to see what can happen.”

Mr Pollitt added that competition should be equal but with Tesco being the “Goliath” of trading and buying power it would lead to unequal trading.

Keith McFarlane said that Huddersfield was a “cosmopolitan, vibrant and safe” place to live.

“The housing sector has been hit hard in the down turn – this will create jobs for local people and provide a safe place to live,” he said.

But after councillors voted to approve the plans, Clr Cooper said: “I’m flabbergasted they’ve gone for this without any agreement on social housing, the quality and design of the build and a whole range of other things.

“This decision should have been deferred until some of these issues were resolved.

“Tesco must be laughing at Kirklees.”

Tesco’s Matt Magee added: “Naturally we are delighted with today’s result.

“We now look forward to working with the community, the council and other local groups in Huddersfield to provide a great new store to the benefit of the whole town centre.”

Huddersfield’s new Tesco by numbers

24-hour Tesco store with 4,585sqm food space and 2,275sqm of non-food space.

2.75 hectare site

Six aisle petrol station

Parking spaces for 746

A peak time survey 5pm – 6pm Friday, predicts there will be 1,319 person trips into the store and 1,250 out of the store.

For the same period, there would be 745 vehicles in and 752 vehicles out of the store. Currently, there are 112 inbound trips and 176 outbound trips at the same location.

The impact on the town centre is expected to lead to a 1.8% loss

It will create 300 more jobs on top of the 230 that exist