Countryside campaigners, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) [1], today (Monday) warned that a Tesco superstore in Sheringham should be refused permission or yet another bustling, distinctive market town will be changed for the worse by a supermarket giant.

On Thursday, North Norfolk District Council will take a final decision on the controversial application [2] by Tesco for a superstore in Sheringham, Norfolk. The outcome could be of national as well as local significance. The principle at stake is who decides whether or not a supermarket gets the go ahead.

‘Local knowledge and experience [3] gained over the last 10 years should be the deciding influence in the planning decision made by councillors. Their voice must be heard,’ said Dr Ian Shepherd, CPRE’s local food campaigner. ‘The decision should not be determined by national retail consultants or by a concern that the council might face a bill for legal costs if Tesco appeals against the decision.’ [4]

Local experience shows what has happened to independent small retailers in the face of similar developments in the region.  It is about understanding the wider relationship with the local rural economy and local jobs, including suppliers and local tradesmen, who the town centre shops support.  It is about the individuality and distinctiveness of the town and its attractiveness to visitors and residents alike.
Small independent shops are the heart beat of the community and the local economy and could disappear if this development goes ahead. [5]

‘North Norfolk Councillors should send a signal that the growing domination of the grocery market and our market towns by the big supermarkets can and should be halted before consumers are left with nowhere else to go,’ concluded Ian Shepherd.

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NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. CPRE, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, is a charity which promotes the beauty, tranquillity and diversity of rural England. We advocate positive solutions for the long-term future of the countryside. Founded in 1926, we have 60,000 supporters and a branch in every county. President: Bill Bryson. Patron: Her Majesty The Queen.

2. Sheringham is a small market town on the North Norfolk Coast.  The involvement of Tesco in Sheringham goes back more than 10 years, first on an edge of town site, which was rejected. Secret discussions were then held between Tesco and the Council on the current site. The then CEO met with a Tesco land agent on the 17 June 1998. After many more meetings involving staff from both parties this resulted in a legal agreement dated 9 May 2003. A new Council administration did not become aware of the existence of the agreement until 3 April 2006. The site selected requires the demolition of 15 flats (increasingly redeployed by the Council from secure tenants to use for the temporary homeless), the community centre and the fire station. Tesco would be under an obligation to replace the last two, but not the housing.

3. CPRE Norfolk has taken part in the formal planning processes, starting in August 2003. The proposal for a large new store has brought very considerable opposition from local residents, the Sheringham and District Preservation Society, the Sheringham Campaign Against Major Retail Overdevelopment (SCAMROD), Sheringham Chamber of Commerce, and the Rural Shops Alliance.

4. The application under consideration is for the erection of a retail food store of approximately 2,760sq.m in gross floor area, of which 1,500sq.m would be net retail sales area. The site extends to about 1.12 hectares and is at the edge of the town centre. Two access points are proposed onto the A149 main coastal road, one to serve a new car park with 179 spaces, the other for delivery vehicles to reach the service yard.

5. CPRE Norfolk maintains that local experience shows that a store of this size would have a devastating impact on the flourishing local shops and the character of Sheringham. CPRE consider that an appropriate size for any new store should be at most 750sq.m net retail sales area.  Sheringham is not designated for large town status in the emerging Local Development Framework, which also looks to a size of up to 750sq.m for the net retail sales area of any new store.  See also CPRE’s The Real Choice, 2006 report: http://www.cpre.org.uk/library/results/local-foods

Additional notes:

The retail consultant for the Council agrees with the previous assessment by the Tesco consultant in that there will likely be a significant number of linked trips to the town and associated spin-off benefits, including likely ‘claw back’ of expenditure currently lost to Sheringham. CPRE Norfolk in their analysis in April of the Tesco consultant’s report made the observations below. The world of the major retailers consists of two components. These are the main shop, typically carried out at once a week or a longer interval; and the top-up or basket shop carried out more frequently.

Even taking the figures and methodology at face value there are issues around where the turnover of the proposed Tesco store would be derived. Table 4 in Appendix C to the Planning and Retail Assessments sets out where the main food shopping components would be taken from in their estimated total of £15.695m. Much the greatest take-off would be £9.103m from Morrisons in nearby Cromer; this in itself would spark a price war in which the small independent shops would be the main casualty. The likely real shift of money will not be into Sheringham, but from Morrisons to Tesco.

Within Sheringham itself, the Tesco consultant estimated the current value for main food shopping at £2.429m, with a total diversion to Tesco of £0.454m. This diversion would be made up of £0.074m from the small independent retailers, which amounts to 10% of their main food shopping turnover; and the reminder of the £0.454m. Total for this category would come from the small Budgens and Co-op stores.

Of course the larger part of the turnover of the small independent retailers comes from what Tesco would describe as basket or top-up shopping. But there was no data presented for what the diversion to Tesco from this category would be. However the Tesco consultant gives an estimate of the value of top-up/basket shopping in Sheringham town centre as £1.903m for the ‘others’ (small independents), and including Budgens and Co-op it amounts to a total of £2.7m.

By the nature of the business of the small independent retailers, the £1.903m ‘basket shop’ attributed to them will risk a diversion to Tesco of a much greater proportion than 10%. A conservative estimate of a 30% siphoning off from the basket category would represent a loss of £0.57m, to give a total lost by the small independent retailers of £0.64m. This difference in scale would much better relate to what has been found in practice on the impact of the proliferation of large supermarkets on the small independent retailers.