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May19
Blot on Lichfield’s landscape
Filed under: Rant;3 Comments left, but what do you think? Tagged as: butchers, greengrocers, Hindleys, Lichfield, local food, local produce, local supermarket, markets, TescosI do try and avoid blatantly criticising the supermarkets but I must admit to gasping in horror as I drove through Lichfield last week at the phenomenal scale of the new Tesco’s. I know local residents have been complaining vociferously that planning permission was ever granted for such a huge replacement to the original store and now they have started to clad it it you can see their concerns are justified. I realise that developments like this bring jobs to an area and councils have to encourage economic investment on their patch, but as I drove on to collect my bread from Hindleys, saw the greengrocers up ahead, then went past the market and Walter Smiths, the butchers I just prayed that consumers understand that these local businesses are the heart of our towns and cities. I then passed a woman on a bicycle with bulging white carrier bags hanging off each side of her handle bars….she’d obviously just been to the market. She made me smile and gave me hope.
3 Responses to “Blot on Lichfield’s landscape”
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I have heard (although cannot confirm) that the new tesco in lichfield is the biggest in U.K.
I can’t understand how this i suitable for the centre of what is a small market town (with city status).Surely councillor Mike Fryers experience (being an ex-regional Exucutive of tescos) and also being a local lichfieldian would have put him in good stead to say “i think this store is too big”.
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It is a discgrace. We have been promised a regeneration of the District’s shopping facilities for years – i.e high street stores, in both Burntwood and Lichfield, for years and years and is still yet to happen. This is what a lot of people in Lichfield and Burntwood want. However…. no-one wanted a huge ugly tesco store to be built and yet it somehow managed to get swiftly through planning permission and is now days away from opening. It’s a disgrace and not in any way ‘in-keeping’ with the character of Lichfield.
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Stephanie Parrett September 21st, 2009 at 2:38 pm
I am neither for or against the new store in Lichfield. Though I can’t help reading these comments and feeling that the point my have been slightly missed. This by no means the biggest in the U.K., the one at Bar Hill in Cambridge is so big it would be phsically impossible to put a store of that size on the Lichfield site, and also as it is replacing a supermarket that was alredy there I hardly think that it will cause the dramatic loss in small businesses that is being predicted. The type of people that will shop in Tescos are those that work all day and need a place to shop in the evenings. They are not the same consumers who shop at the small businesses in lichfield. The small clothes stores for example, attract the type of people who are very unlikely to buy at Tescos. The butchers and Bakers of lichfield survived the arrival of the previous supermarket and I’m confident will continue to do so. I do feel however that after having written this the question I am left with is what exactly Tescos hoped to gain from opening this expensive new store if it all it will give is mor echoice for its existing customers.
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Author
Jenny Hendon is the forty-something year-old founder of Our Produce. She firmly believes that sitting around the table sharing good, wholesome food with family and friends is a key contributor to a contented lifestyle. Now realising her ambition to set up her own business, Jenny's focus is firmly on making sure Our Produce provides others with the very best local ingredients for their daily food.