Does Tesco Owe Local Residents for Delay?

An interesting letter from local resident Les O'Leary reaches the St Albans and Harpenden Review. He asks,

"Property owners in the vicinity of the Tesco's derelict site on London Road, St Albans, have suffered eight years of loss of amenity and I would assume property values. This is set to continue.

"Do readers know of any legal (statutory or civil) route to recovering such losses from Tesco, perhaps with penalties? I am thinking that persons who have sold properties in the period could, if the evidence can be gathered, demonstrate a financial loss. Perhaps part of all of this loss may be recoverable?"

"Such a case would also attract significant popular support I think and could establish an important precedent that would deter developers from cynically trashing such neighbourhoods for commercial gain".

Any ideas?

UPDATE: Further to this letter, Les has been in touch with Stop Tesco and plans to explore this further! Les also provided us with his calculation that a store the size of Tesco's proposed one will take at least £13.6 million per annum - even by Tesco's own admission, 80% of this will come from other retailers in the City. (Les based this calculation on the Guardian's article that we covered here). Thanks!