Issues and Options Results Are In - And It Doesn't Look Good for Tesco!

St Albans Council has now published a summary of the results of its 'issues and options' consultation that took place last year. The whole summary can be found here (start at page 26 of the PDF and keep reading!). However, we've summarised the key findings that relate to London Road here, with especially interesting findings in red! Many thanks to all of you who contributed your thoughts!

SUMMARY OF THE ISSUES AND OPTIONS CONSULTATION STAGE FOR THE CORE STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT PLAN DOCUMENT AND NEXT STEPS

EXEC SUMMARY
xix) The consultation has generated considerable opposition to another food store in the District, in any of the three possible locations. A number of respondents have questioned whether there is proven need for additional convenience goods floorspace.

Option 29a – Improving and enhancing the range of shops, facilities and services?

Officers note that a Tesco store in London Road is not generally supported (see also Q55 regarding other possible uses for this site).

Q32: Given the lack of opportunities for additional convenience (i.e. food store) floorspace on City Centre or Edge of Centre sites in St Albans, do you think that any proven quantitative need should be met on an out of centre site?

Those supporting: 10
Those objecting: 58
Summary Response included:
- Strong objection to a new Tesco store in Alma Road/London Road.
- A significant number of respondents considered that there was no proven need for further food store development in St Albans, despite the findings of the Council’s Retail and Leisure Study (2006).

Officers’ Comments and Recommended Action:
The Council accepted the consultants’ findings (GL Hearn Report) in terms of the quantitative and qualitative need for additional food store floorspace within St Albans. However, Officers consider that it would be appropriate to revisit some of the assumptions made for calculating retail need, in the light of information that is now available and to take into account any changing circumstances since the work was originally carried out. In particular, Officers consider that it would now be more appropriate for assumed population growth within the District to be based on the housing growth figures for St Albans City and District as set out in the draft RSS14, rather than on the growth estimates from the 2001 Census.
The re-assessment work will need to take place prior to the Preferred Options stage of Core Strategy preparation, as it could potentially have a bearing on the consultants’ overall findings, in terms of quantitative need for convenience floorspace.
Respondents have raised various concerns regarding the potential location of a new food store, which will need to be taken into account if the updated retail study still identifies any need for a new store that cannot be accommodated on a City Centre site (see Officers’ response to Q35 and Q36).

Q33: If the Core Strategy was to propose an out of centre location to accommodate a new food store, would you support the Evershed Site
Those supporting: 6
Those objecting: 42
Observations: 1

Summary Responses were:

Strong opposition on the following grounds:

• Increased traffic congestion and pollution
• Damage to local businesses in City Centre
• Loss of locally listed buildings
• Wasted opportunity for residential or mixed use development (including a primary school or leisure/arts facilities)
• Already sufficient supermarkets
• Fails to meet qualitative deficiency for a City Centre store.
• No linked trips – people unlikely to walk from the site up London Road into the City Centre and back.
• Scale of development would be excessive in the context of the surrounding townscape
A foodstore on this site would prevent the development of a store on the sequentially preferable Civic Centre South site.
HCC Passenger Transport Unit considers that the site is poorly served by local town bus services.

Tesco considers that the site has the closest relationship to the City Centre shopping area and is located on an established commercial thoroughfare, directly linked to it. The company considers that the development would encourage linked trips and support retailing in the City Centre. Site is accessible by public transport and is a brownfield site.

Officers’ Comments and Recommended Action:
See Officers’ response to Q32 (regarding quantitative need for a new food store). Whilst no conclusions can be drawn pending the outcome of the Council’s updating work on convenience retail need, Officers note the strong opposition from residents to Option FS1 (and also the comments made by Tesco Stores Ltd). It is understood that Tesco intend to carry out a further public consultation exercise with regard to the possibility of a food store on this site in November 2007, with a view to submitting a planning application by the end of the year. See also respondents’ comments to Q55 (r.e. other proposed uses for this land)

For other the other proposed supermarket sites: Option 33b – FS2 North of St Albans City Centre Those supporting: 14 Those objecting: 22
Option 33c – FS3 North of St Albans Those supporting: 9 Those objecting: 30

Recycling off the Agenda?

'The Environment' is one of the headings on Tesco's tescostalbans.co.uk website, which contains the company's spin on its proposal for St Albans. It makes a big play of new innovations such as 'low-energy fans, cold air retrieval systems, timers on lights and high efficiency refrigeration units' (while of course ignoring the fact that not having an air-conditioned store that attracts 500+ cars per hour and generates thousands of plastic bags would use less energy).

However, Tesco's green credentials have taken a further knock. In response to an email from Stop Tesco's Ian Langford asking about recycling facilities, Tesco's Michael Kissman (hello again!) replied, saying,

"Detailed consideration has been given to the siting of recycling facilities within the car park. However, the height of the ground floor and the construction of the podium level of the proposed car park would not enable the manoeuvrability of the vehicles needed to empty the units. We are, however, considering alternative options".

We think this means that there won't be recycling bins. So there goes the simplest way a supermarket can help the environment.

PS. Environmentally-concerned readers may also remember that last year Tesco was found out exporting CDs to Switzerland and then sending them back to the UK to avoid paying VAT, despite the obvious environmental damage this was causing!

Our Poll Finds Principled People

Our latest poll asked whether visitors to this site would shop at Tesco's new store. It's not that surprising that few said they would, but we were encouraged that 70% of those who voted (41) said they would not shop at the new Tesco store 'on principle'.

Looks like Tesco may find few takers for its store - so why waste time building it?

Tesco Told 'No' in Lancashire

ThisisLancashire reports good news for small shop owners in Preston. A 1,000 signature petition and 317 letters of objection were enough for councillors to sent Tesco packing. Unfortunately, as the article admits, Tesco can apply for an appeal to the Secretary of State - who of course does not live in Preston...

Sir Terry Avoids 'Awards Ceremony'

Innovative anti- Tesco protestors from Chorlton tried to 'award' Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy with a 'golden cork in the ear' award, reports the South Manchester Reporter. Apparently this was because Tesco, in their opinion, 'has done most to ignore the needs of locals communities'.

We'd heartily agreed, and point out that by avoiding the protestors by arriving for a meeting early, Sir Terry demonstrated perfectly the reasons for winning the award...

Yet More Out of Date Tesco Food

BBC News reports that Tesco has been ordered to pay more than £50,000 after 25 out-of-date items were found in five stores across the South of Wales. Items were displayed up to six days after their sell-by dates last September and October.

Tesco's spin? "We have strict procedures in place to prevent this sort of thing happening and are very sorry that these were not followed in these instances. This is very unusual as our stores take part in daily audits to prevent any out-of-date food being left on shelves."

What does unusual mean though? Last June we reported on nine-day old bacon being sold in Tesco's Reading store, just three weeks after the BBC Whistleblower programme showed out-of-date food at two other Tesco stores. Twice might be a coincidence, but three times in less than one year is surely a systematic problem?

Another Monster Tesco!

Tesco seems desperate to squeeze the maximum space out of its stores, regardless of the impact on local communities. Following the 'Tesco on stilts' in Carlisle, we read in the Liverpool Echo that Tesco wants to expand a store in the city that is less than six years old, adding an extra floor to its carpark. It appears that Tesco has already discussed buying terraced houses next to the existing development to help the expansion (Bedford Road, anyone?).

A Tesco spokesperson trots out the usual lines about 'wanting to hear what local people say' while keeping a Nelsonian deaf ear to the comments a few lines above him in the article from concerned local people. Tesco also claims that the store expansion would 'create 170 jobs' - it would be great if the store would factor in competition job losses in future!

It would be interesting to know if Tesco made any promises about expansion to locals six years ago - but once you've agreed to a small store it can always change its mind later...

Tesco Jobs Outsourced

Tesco makes a play of how it creates 'local' jobs through it's supermarket building programme. Of course external research shows that this is nonsense and that on average over 270 jobs are lost from the local economy with every store opening.

Tesco has taken the next step by removing 'national' jobs and outsourcing them to India. The icWales website reports that 26 Tesco head office company secretaries have been made redundant and ordered to train up their Indian replacements before they leave.

Interestingly the website also reports that month ago Tesco had denied the jobs were being 'off-shored'. Tesco's spin-doctors were also spinning flat out to put a positive gloss on sacking its employees - the statement at the bottom of the article is yet another prime example of Tesco PR puffery...

The Cabinet Minister, The Lobbyist and the Supermarket?

Thisislondon.co.uk, the website of the London Evening Standard, is running an interesting article about Cabinet Minister Peter Hain and the lobbyist who ran his recent campaign for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. It seems that Tesco is a big client of this lobbyist - and Peter Hain has shown a lot of support for Tesco recently. Anyway, read on here and make up your own mind....

UPDATE: Well, you can't make up your own mind. The article has gone, and other links to it now point here, to a much less controversial story. The introduction has been archived by Google here...

FURTHER UPDATE: A political blog run by BBC Wales' David Cornock may have got to the bottom of the story. Apparently the article originally appeared in the Mail on Sunday and accused a political lobbying company of arranging for Peter Hain to visit a Tesco supermarket, which both the Government and the lobbyists deny. In a further twist, the 'clients' page of the lobbyists, Morgan Allen Moore, is 'currently being updated'.

Of course, we are aware that Tesco uses political lobbyists - we know that they've talked to local prospective parliamentary candidates in St Albans for example. However successful they may be at a national level though, they've not managed to swing any political support Tesco's way here. No idea why it wastes £1000s per day on these consultants!

Tesco's Cafe U-turn

One of Tesco's few selling points for its new store that will in any way benefit the local community is that it will have a 'café' at the front. Leaving aside the fact that there are a number of perfectly good local cafés whose business would be damaged by this, any suggested 'community benefit' may not last.

The Ledbury Reporter carries a story today about a local Tesco 'balancing the changing needs of retail' by, er.... replacing its café with more space to sell food and stationery.

The first comment on the paper's website below the story reads...

'More evidence, if it were needed, that Tescos is a corporate mammoth that neither recognises or cares for any community it foists itself upon through our inadequate planning system. Just say 'no' to them and shop elsewhere.'

We couldn't put it any better! Of course, as we reported recently, there are other reasons why you might not want to go to a Tesco café in the first place...

Another Disadvantage?

We thought we'd put together a pretty good list of the possible disadvantages of a new supermarket in St Albans, but this story in icBerkshire suggests another one! 'Yobs' have been using a Tesco car park for showing off in their cars, creating noise at night and danger to local residents. As it stands, Tesco's plans for St Albans don't seem to address this problem!

PS - Anyone know what 'wheel spins and doughnuts' are? Please let us know as it sounds intriguing!

Happy New Year to you all - especially Mr Kissman and the Herts Advertiser...

It's been a bit quiet on the Tesco front over Christmas - perhaps Michael Kissman and other managers were spending their time on the tills to sell as many turkeys as possible?

Anyway, Mr Kissman is back with a new scheme, this time to double the size of the Tesco in the centre of Hertford. The East Herts Herald reports that this will include 'rooftop' parking and a new size of 48,000 sq. feet. We'll keep you informed of developments - another anti-Tesco group must be imminent!

We'd also like to thank Madeleine Burton, News Editor of the Herald's sister paper the Herts Advertiser for entertaining us! In an article that takes a humorous look at possible news events in St Albans over the next year, she suggest that Tesco will submit a planning application in March, one that has little parking and no attention to traffic problems, but one that 'is best for them and their profits'. By December, she predicts that Tesco's plans will merge with those of railfreight developer Helioslough and Tesco's London Road site is to become a rail depot... Read the whole story here.