Focus On Supermarket Domination Sally Williams

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Focus On Supermarket DominationSally Williams
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Opening Statistics

• 75 of groceries in UK bought from the big four
• Tesco plans to have 1200 Express stores by 2015
• Tesco has a land bank of 185 development sites
• 2157 retailers closed in 2004

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Negative Effects

• Clone Towns
• Ghost Towns
• Loss of infrastructure and traditional skills
• Less local food
• Higher rural deprivation
• Threats to livestock, landscapes and wildlife
• Threat to tourism
• Increase in food miles

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Negative Effects

• Generates traffic
• ¾ arrive at supermarkets by car
• Just in time deliveries
• Gateways with large car parks
• Food and packaging waste 40 from supermarkets
• Producer exploitation

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Fewer Jobs?

• Low paid
• New deal
• Less transferable skills
• Automated developments
• Loss of jobs within 15km radius

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Producer exploitation

• Tyrells Crisps
• Squeezed profit margins
• Took time paying
• Weight disputes
• Undercutting prices
• Stocked product without permission

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Negative Effects

• Closing of essential services
• Loss of community spaces
• 1 spent in a local shop puts twice back into the
  economy than 1 spent in a multiple
• NEF

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Positive Effects

• Increase footfall to supermarket (but to town
  centres?)
• Prevent shoppers using a competing town with a
  supermarket
• Lower prices
• Keeps inflation down

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Link Trips

• Need to encourage footfall from supermarket to
  the town centre
• Beccles created an attractive link road
• Funded through section 106, Mayors Fund, EEDA
  Quality of Place fund

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Supermarket Expansion

• Woodbridge

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Case StudyWoodbridge Suffolk

• Expansion of existing store by 30
• Research on the effect of town non conclusive
• 225,000 for the town centre allowing Tesco to
  use 27 for non-food goods
• Defined in a Section 106 agreement between Tesco
  and Suffolk Coastal DC
• The Woodbridge Town Trust (which evolved form MTI
  partnership) has taken on the responsibility for
  defining an action plan for the money to be spent
  and then implementing the action plan

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Actions

• Part funding MTP post
• Updating CCTV
• Feasibility study for improved parking in the
  town
• Improved signage
• Marketing study to promote the town centre

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Planning

• PPS6
• Sequential approach
• No viable alternatives in (and then on edge of)
  town centre
• Increase of Express and Extra stores
• Mezzanine loophole
• Support development that enhances..market towns
  and other rural service centres..seek to protect
  existing facilities
• Developments should be accessible by a choice of
  means of transport

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Planning Process

• Pre planning discussions
• Planning application is made
• Planning officer weighs up evidence and writes a
  report
• Elected planning committee votes on the
  application
• Some referred to Secretary of State
• Right to appeal to ODPM within six months

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Objecting?

• Early intelligence
• Put your comments in writing
• Be brief and objective
• Meet the planning officer and councillors
• Work out key areas of objection e.g. traffic
  impact, loss of vitality of town centre

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Woodbridges Experiences

• Only need 2-300 Metres square
• Planning for joining shops together
• Extension to existing store
• Objections
• Spoiling conservation area
• Multiples spoil characteristic nature of the town
• Economic effect of clone towns
• Just in time delivery systems

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Lady Caroline Cranbrook Saxmundham, Suffolk

• Food Web Survey in 1997
• 81 shops in Tesco catchment area
• 67 believed Tesco arrival would force them to
  shut
• Traders employed more than 500 people
• Sourced products from over 200 local producers

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Appeal

• Appealed on the following
• they had not exhausted all town centre and other
  options before being able to justify an
  out-of-town development
• the potential impact on existing town centre
  traders
• concerns about its sustainability and the impact
  of additional car journeys

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8 Years Later

• Most recent survey shows 81 businesses trading
• 14 closed, 14 new ones opened
• Tesco might lodge an appeal
• Prosperous area

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What solutionshave you implemented to overcome
any negative issues
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Aylsham, Ludlow, Diss

• Cittaslow
• Born from Slow Food Movement
• Promotion of local goods and produce
• Emphasising local distinctiveness
• www.cittaslow.org.uk

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Building Independents

• Build Local Support
• Promote independents day
• Strengthen Independents skills - Base
• Loyalty Cards/Rewards Scheme