We already have three supermarkets within Ottery - there is now a threat concerning the Ottery factory site and proposals for a supermarket development thus threatening to adversely affect the livelihoods of the existing local shops.
What are people's views? See
http://www.tescopoly.org
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/campaigning_against_supermarkets.pdf
http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=2596
What should we do as a group?
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2 comments:
Fight it! Torrington fought a succesful campaign against Tesco, Ottery has fought it before and can do it again. Ideas please.
Sustainability V Supermarkets
Following a meeting it appears that a planning application is soon to be submitted for the factory site which will include homes and a supermarket. This could have a large impact on Ottery St Mary. What might that impact be on the town and surrounding villages?
Is it possible to resist the rise of the supermarkets? To many it seems that the answer is no. The government supports their expansion. The local planning system, which governs how land is developed, is complex, seemingly ever-changing and stacked against objectors.
But despite this, all over the country, community activists, concerned citizens and local businesses are fighting back. Armed with the right information, knowledge of the planning system and convincing arguments, campaigners in Brighton, Suffolk, Edinburgh and Walsall have recently won their cases. The same can happen in Ottery St Mary.
Supermarkets claim they bring choice, cheap food (the debate on whether food should be cheap as opposed to good is another thorny issue), development and jobs. But the reality is different.
1. Local choice is eroded as smaller, independent shops struggle to compete with the supermarkets. The loss of local, independent shops can have serious impacts in terms of access to food, particularly for people on lower incomes or those who don’t have use of a car. Ottery St Mary is incredibly lucky to have a good selection of excellent locally owned stores, are we prepared to see these close, to be replaced by boarded up shops? This will leave many people who do not wish to buy from a supermarket with little or no choice but to travel further to buy from the ever decreasing number of private shops in other towns.
2. Money is siphoned away from local communities and towards shareholders and distant corporations. A Friends of the Earth study of local food schemes found that on average just over half of business turnover was returned to the local economy – compared to as little as five per cent for supermarkets.
3. Traffic congestion increases. The distribution systems used by supermarkets and the location of out of town stores generate large amounts of traffic. The possible site for a supermarket in Ottery is such that many people will drive to it, we must support town centre shops that people can walk to.
4. Local jobs are lost. Supermarket claims that new stores bring in jobs fail to consider the wider picture of independent retailer bankruptcies. A 1998 study by the National Retailer Planning Forum (NRPF) found that 276 (an average) local jobs were lost per store opened. Imagine this in a town like Ottery, small shops closing in the town centre is only part of the picture, look further afield to Tipton St John, West Hill, Feniton. Consider local food producers, tradesmen and women who service these businesses, garages that provide and service their vehicles etc. Think about everyone from hairdressers to builders, window cleaners to decorators. Their incomes could be cut, forcing some out of business.
5. Food and packaging waste is generated. Packaging now makes up nearly a quarter of household waste. A shocking 35-40 per cent of all household waste which ends up in landfill begins life as a purchase from one of the big five supermarkets.
6. Suppliers are exploited and the environment is damaged. Supermarkets use their market dominance to exploit suppliers and farmers and drive down prices, thus ensuring that environmentally damaging practices are continued both in the UK and overseas. Consider issues such as the recent price fixing scandal for dairy products that has seen the supermarkets fined for illegal practices, their defence was partly that the increase in retail cost for milk, cheese and butter was passed on to farmers, but it appears that this may well not have happened.
7. Planning gain agreements (Town and Country Planning Act 1990 Section 106 Agreements) where supermarkets offer to provide money for community centres, road improvements and the like are not always what they seem and should not be the basis for allowing a supermarket to do the damage detailed above
Supermarkets and sustainability can not be spoken about in the same breath. We are facing a period of change in society, the age of affordable, plentiful oil is over, and this is what the supermarket culture is based upon.
To allow supermarkets to continue to destroy our small towns is short term folly. It has been recognised in many places, let’s not fall into the trap.
To discover more please visit the Sustainable Ottery website at http://www.sustainableottery.org.uk/ or join the debate on the web log (blog) at http://www.sustainableottery.blogspot.com/.
When the application is submitted make your comments known to East Devon District Council Planning Department and your town councilors.
Visit http://www.corporatewatch.org/ for more information.
Source http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/campaigning_against_supermarkets.pdf
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