Home » It was over before it Began...Is Stourport about to be Butchered?

Here is a story I was trying to write about Tesco's building yet another large supermarket. I had only heard of the plans two weeks before a vital council meeting.

I sent these notes to my editor to give her the outline of the situation but once the local businesses threw in the towel, there wasn't any point in publishing the story...and yet I felt someone ought to know.

Dear Zoe,

So far other area papers have poorly covered this issue so the local people feel no one is listening to or defending their wishes. Tesco in particular seem to be building large stores up and down the UK regardless of the wishes of the locals. Though I have nothing concrete yet there is some suggestion of collusion between members of the local government and Tesco.

The man heading the fight is Jim Perry who is a lifelong resident of Stourport, who has nothing to gain financially in this fight he just wants to stop Tesco tearing out the heart of his hometown. Mr Perry has appeared on Midlands Today (a local TV news program) but so far has been unable to galvanise the locals who believe it's a done deal and that Tesco's can't be beaten.

Is Stourport about to be Butchered?

For some time Tesco has wanted to build a large supermarket on the outskirts of the town centre of Stourport-on-Severn and it now seems a step closer when they recently received provisional planning permission. To make the deal happen Tesco have offered large financial "sweetners" to influence the local council. An offer to build a road and even a bridge can make quite a powerful argument.

Every situation like this has another side to the argument, which so far has not been properly voiced. I believe if Tesco is allowed to build there proposed supermarket it will tear the heart of the town centre. Like many other small towns in the UK the residents feel powerless to stop a multi national company like Tesco getting their own way.

Losing local businesses can sometimes be irreplaceable and such is the case with the 4 quality butchers in the town. These local butchers are part of a dying breed who are knowledgeable, highly skilled and offer a wealth of information and advice to their customers.

Besides selling quality meats these butchers all have something they are well known for such as home made pies, smoke their own sides of bacon, make sausages, sell game and even sell make your own faggot kits (a pork meatball) if you want to have a go.

You only have to look for quality butchers around the Midlands to realize how blessed Stourport is to have 4 such shops in a town with the population of around 10,000. Unfortunately as good as there butchery skills are so far they haven't been very good at raising awareness of this issue to people living in the area.

It's reckoned even by the supporters of the plan that three out of the four butchers will go out of business. These are small businesses that anchor the town centre together, so perhaps without them the greengrocer, the florist and other shops could go out of business if the number of people shopping on the high street dramatically drops.

As a chef, whenever I am in front of an audience at cooking demonstrations I explain to them the importance of finding a good butcher and building a relationship with that butcher. To give you consistently high quality and often-local meat. I do feel celebrity chef s could do a lot more to promote butchers on their TV shows yet we in Stourport have 4 and are in danger of losing them all.

Stourport currently has a medium-sized Co-op supermarket a Lidl and a Tesco Metro, which offers sufficient choice and price range of goods. This huge proposed Tesco (just off the ring road) will encourage people to do a "One stop shop" and thus could threaten the Co-op, Lidl and the other high street shops

. Tesco's are pressing ahead with this plan even though they already have a 24-hour superstore just 3 miles away in Kidderminster.

I'm not against Tesco or any other supermarket as long as they leave room for local business to survive. As for the Stourport town council, I want to ask them why they seem determined to rip the heart out of my town, what have Tesco promised them to make them so hell bent on going ahead with this unpopular plan?

Environmental Effect

I was told that the traffic on the one-way system had to be measured and the figures to be included in the planning application. I was told that Tesco's did the measuring on a Sunday to make sure the traffic figures were low. I anecdotally heard that a local environmental scientist made his own measurements on the traffic level and the pollution and found the figure to be already above the agreed legal limit.

Tescopoly

Now for those UK readers who are facing similar situations in their towns, there is an actual web site dedicated to fighting Tesco to stop them building anymore large supermarkets in manly rural towns. The site swaps and offers information between the local groups, empowering them.

Tescopoly not only highlights over 80 local protests currently going on up and down in the UK. They also highlight the damage to the farming community and the local environment that Tesco's monopoly causes.

My town already has 1 medium and 2 small supermarkets it didn't need a superstore that includes a petrol station. When it comes it will close down local businesses and add to the already overcrowded one-way traffic system during rush hour.

On May16th, 2008 the district council squashed the last opposition

 

None of the human drama will be reflected in Tesco's balance sheet, which showed a 2.8 billion (that's about $5.5 billion dollar) profit in 2007. There will just be a manila file, with my town's name on it gathering dust inside a filing cabinet.

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