Tenbury's Last Chance...

Dear Planning Committee Members,

You have a critically important decision to make on
7th March.

Just over a year ago, after a long and careful discussion, your committee refused permission for a large supermarket to be built on the cattle market site in Tenbury. You have now been asked to change that decision: please, please don’t. There have been no real changes to the application and the decision should be the same – a refusal. 

To do otherwise, would be inconsistent and unjustified. We are very lucky to have a diverse and vital high street in Tenbury; but make no mistake, it is very fragile and would not survive the effects of a large supermarket being built in the town.

• The current bridge closure, a minor event in comparison, has cost traders up to 50% of their turnover during the closure.

• Your own local plan says that we need only 18 sq M of additional food retail space – the application is for nearly 80 times that amount – far more than all of the current food retail space in Tenbury

• The Council for the Protection of Rural England has concluded that “it will have a strong adverse impact on the traders in the town and duplicate services offered”.

In these difficult times jobs are precious and any jobs lost are difficult, if not impossible, to replace.

• The British Retail Planning Forum, which is financed by the supermarkets themselves, has found that every time a large supermarket opens, on average, 276 jobs are lost.

• These figures suggest that if the development goes ahead we will lose about 100 jobs in Tenbury – that is a net loss of about 100 jobs.

The development will have a catastrophic effect on the conservation area and the historical setting.

• This committee thought so last year and refused permission

• The council’s own Conservation Officer describes it as a “large, single span, semi- industrial building” that will “certainly impact upon the Conservation Area”.

• English Heritage recommend that permission be refused

• The Council for British Archaeology is against the development

• The Civic Society has said, a “supermarket of this size ……. cannot be made to fit visually in a historic setting, particularly as this proposal requires the demolition of an important historic building”

• The Victorian Society is against the demolition of the Old Infirmary and so against the development


• Your own planning officers say that it would be “regrettable” to demolish the RBB building for this development – avoid those regrets and refuse permission, we will never be able to get it back

There are many other concerns...

• There are many, very real concerns about safety on the roads and pavements around the development – there has been an accident on the site in the last few weeks involving a car and a supermarket lorry

• A recent traffic survey has shown that more than 1,600 traffic movements already take place between 5pm and 7pm at this end of Teme Street

• The development does not provide anything like enough parking – the proposal is well below the national minimum standards


• There is not even room for a trolley to be placed behind a shopper's car whilst the shopping is being loaded into the car’s boot without impeding the traffic on the proposed access road

• There is no answer to how the bridge, a scheduled ancient monument, will cope with the extra traffic (estimated at up to 2,000 crossings per day by cars and many more by large delivery lorries) – when it fails to cope, as it frequently must, Tenbury will be regularly gridlocked

• Have no doubt about the strength of feeling in and around Tenbury. There have been many hundreds of written objections and only a handful of letters in support of this unnecessary and damaging development.

And finally...

Tesco has no interest in or understanding of Tenbury as a place in its own right, and, it would seem, has little respect for our local authorities.

Please refuse permission for this wholly unnecessary development that would do so much damage, in so many ways, to Tenbury. Make no mistake, the damage would be permanent.

The future vitality of the town's highstreet is in your hands. It is your decision.

New Tesco Superstore Planning Documents Now 'Live' For Scrutiny

To alert you to the fact that the latest application by Tesco to build a superstore on the cattle market site in Tenbury is now 'live' online for your scrutiny. The store is an 'A1' class superstore - which means that it could easily include [or add at a future date without great issue] a pharmacy, post office and hardware/homewares on top of the large range of discounted food goods it will stock. This of course could potentially affect a large percentage of the remaining embattled shops in the town instead of just the food shops which we feared on the last application. If you wish to look available documents over then you can do so by undertaking the following:

1. Firstly go online and copy-in the following address to your browser:

http://e-access.malvernhills.gov.uk/eaccess/Applicationsearch.asp

This should take you to Malvern's Planning Application seach page.

2. The tap in the following reference for the new application in the 'Application Number' box: 11/00887/FUL

This is defined as: "Erection of Class A1 Food Store, Associated Car Parking, Open Space and Landscaping and Access Improvement Works" [They will have to apply separately again to try to demolish the Old Infirmary Building - which we'd expect at the 11th hour so that as few people could digest it and offer-up objections as possible].

This should then display a page titled: "Planning Application Summary", to look through documentation look on the left hand side of the page where you should see a set of blue links to follow-up/review.

3. These documents are also available at Tenbury Library for review as hardcopies too (where you can take photocopies for more in depth scrutiny if you wish). When we spoke with the duty planner there today she assured us that as she was posting the 'Planning Application' signs around and near the site today and that this will allow the required 21 days from today's date [16th August] for individuals and organisations to formally object in writing or e-mails to them. The likelyhood though as this is such a massive development that the process will be open more like 13 weeks.

4. Objection Letter Pro Formas
We're presently pouring through the documents ourselves in order that we get a full picture of the new application. In the first instance we'd encourage individuals to write to MHDC's planners themselves explaining their concerns and objections. We must be clear though in that only letters dealing with planning-related issues will be taken forward to formal objections [i.e. emotive or passionate requests that Tenbury be left alone will not be counted as a formal 'planning objection' (although we'd understand the temptation).

If this all seems a bit of a minefield of documents and forms then we'll soon upload a pro-forma objection letter addressing the salient concerns on the Tenbury Futures blog site [and we'll alert you that we've done so] that you can simply just print, sign and send or drop in to a local highstreet shop. This proved a very effective method of getting a large number [apparently over 800 people locally] to object formally in writing which had a very definite sway from such a small community on the last occasion.

5. And Finally
There is much discussion in the town about this potential Tesco taking over from Tesco's home delivery van operation that currently operates out of the Ludlow store. This may account for the fact that the proposed new Tenbury store [pop 3,500] is even bigger than the last. Needless to say, if this happens then the additional strain on town and bridge traffic would be tremendous on top of that we already forcast.

Tesco's are more than happy to change the use of their stores once they've been built and indeed did just that at Tetbury in the Cotswolds. They'd sold their plan to the town as creating a large number of shop floor retail jobs. Within months of opening though the Tetbury store closed much of it's floorspace and turned the rest over to warehousing which supported it's Tesco Home online catalog business. The consequence of course was that less staff were required on site and the staff were thinned-down to a small fraction of the original number with most of the remainder put on to short term or part time contracts. It does make one look at the new site's massive floorspace in an entirely new way..

References:
You may like to follow-up these references too if you're keen to learn a little more about the company who wishes to parachute in a superstore in the town [these just a sample - there are many, many more out there]:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/05/john-harris-fight-against-supermarkets

http://www.thisislancashire.co.uk/news8489610.Fewer_jobs_on_offer_at_Accrington_s_new_Tesco_store

http://www.tescopoly.org/

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/super_markets_corporate_bullies.pdf

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/8687519/Tesco-caught-operating-two-tiered-pricing.html

http://www.rhyljournal.co.uk/news/94468/traders-hold-crisis-talks-as-tesco-hits-sales.aspx

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/sep/03/food-miles-environment-impact

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1277180/Tesco-selling-asparagus-Peru--town-famous-producing-vegetable.html