The Man from Tesco, He Say 'No'

Here's the feedback from our meeting with Michael Kissman and Jo Richards, representing Tesco, on Tuesday. Thanks to the 26 people who sent us questions for him - we're expecting those back soon and will let you have the answers.

THE MAN FROM TESCO SAYS ‘NO’ TO 5,000 PEOPLE FROM ST ALBANS

The St Albans Stop Tesco group met with Michael Kissman, Tesco Corporate Development Manager, on Tuesday 3rd July. During the meeting, Mr Kissman dashed the hopes of over 5,000 local residents and hundreds of local businesses by insisting that Tesco would build another supermarket in the City on London Road.

Mr Kissman offered to listen to concerns about the site but showed Tesco’s indifference to the real feelings of the thousands of local people who are against any supermarket development when he said,

"we build supermarkets. We are not in the house-building trade. We’re not going to pretend that we will build something else”.

When confronted with a list of the needs of the City, Mr Kissman said that local people needed to talk to the council, not Tesco, about them. He also claimed that because no one else had offered to buy the land, and St Albans District Council had not compulsorily purchased it, there was no demand for an alternative use.

Stop Tesco pointed out that property developers do not approach people who have expressed a desire to build on land, they buy land that is up for sale! Stop Tesco will also be writing to the council to ask them to purchase the land for community use including social and family housing and a primary school.

The meeting also covered the following issues:

• Tesco expects to put its planning application in during the next ‘two or three’ months. Tesco blames the slow progress of its application on the complexity of the planning process and would not commit to a timetable for action.
• Even if planning permission were speedily obtained Tesco admitted that it would take several years before the store was open.
• Tesco admitted that it is sensitive about its reputation and had made mistakes in the past, for example in Stockport, where a store was built 20% larger than planning permission granted the company.
• Tesco has consulted local police and the Chamber of Commerce among other organisations, but had not spoken to any residents group before this meeting in six months of consultation. It has now agreed to meet with the Telford Court Residents Association - we'd urge any other residents associations to make their views known to Mr Kissman as well by emailing michael.kissman@uk.tesco.com!
  
• Tesco agreed to consider opening the car park on the Eversheds site behind the Peugeot garage to demonstrate how extra shoppers would be attracted to London Road by additional parking.

Mike Dilke of Stop Tesco says,

“We are aware that Tesco has the right to apply for planning permission. We did have some hope that it would also show some awareness of its responsibility to the needs of local people, but this is not the case.

"It appears that the only reason Tesco met us was to tick a box on their 'consultation exercise' to be able to say that it had consulted local people. We feel that they did not take the views of St Albans people seriously and had few positive suggestions to solve our concerns.

“We will both vigorously oppose any planning application and continue to communicate the views of the vast majority of the people of St Albans to Tesco and local and national planning authorities.”