Not just one store (From Malvern Gazette)

Not just one store

2:30pm Friday 3rd February 2012 in Letters

IF we look at the Sainsbury’s proposal for a superstore on the Ledbury bypass not as a single “store”, but as a collection of what are, in effect, many individual small shops we may get a clearer view of what is actually being proposed and its implications.

The butchers’ counter will be the size of a small family butcher’s shop, the aisles for fruit and vegetables will no doubt have the capacity of a good size town greengrocers.

There will no doubt be a section for alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages that will be bigger than any high street off licence. Health and beauty products will probably have as large a stock as any high street chemist. The bakery section will outstock any independent town bakery, though most of what it sells will be made in some factory miles away, etc.

In effect, what is proposed by Sainsbury’s is a whole new market place/high street, a new retail quarter, in fact. Can, should, would, a town of Ledbury’s size support two retail centres? I suggest that if a property developer had proposed this development as a new town centre it would have been thrown out of the planning process.

Ledbury and its surroundings cannot support this level of trade. One of these retail centres will go to the wall if Sainsbury’s is allowed to drop this out-ofscale, out-of-town, monster on us.

If you think the description of the Sainsbury’s “retail quarter” sounds derisible, remember that if Sainsbury’s opens it will unleash its big guns and price wars and while you can now buy meat from five sources it is likely to wind up as Sainsbury’s or.... Sainsbury’s.

ROBERT DILLON
Ledbury