Letter by Ross Wordie

The following letter was sent to Christina Downes by Ross Wordie (Dr.)

Inspector Christina Downes,
The Planning Inspectorate,
Room 3/04,
Temple Quay House,
2 The Square,
Temple Quay,
Bristol. BS1 6PN

Dear Inspector Downes,

    I have just been reading your report on the Tesco appeal case at Sheringham, and I am having some difficulty in understanding your reasons for turning the appeal down. You begin your report logically enough by stating (p. 2),

    'I consider that there are three main issues that are common to both appeals. The first is the effect of the proposal on the retail function, vitality, and viability of Sheringham town centre. The second is its effect on the character and appearance of the area. The third is whether there would be unacceptable congestion on the local highway network.'

    Yes, precisely so. But let us take these considerations in reverse order. By your own admission, you agree that there would be no traffic problem caused by the proposed store, so we need not dwell on that. It is on the appearance point that your judgment begins to veer into the incomprehensible. You say that the store would be 'harmful to the character and appearance of the area' (p.9), but how can you say this, in view of the present appearance of the area? It is currently occupied by a crumbling community centre and a decrepit fire station, both of which must be replaced, now at ratepayers' expense since your decision. There is a row of uninspiring 1970s flats, and a manse that is currently flooded, and again needs to be replaced. How could a Tesco store possibly make the present 'character and appearance of the area' any worse? On the contrary, the proposed Tesco store, with its cobblestone walls and pantiled roof would be entirely in keeping with the buildings of this area. Its design is in fact a very attractive one, which would definitely enhance the area.

    But it is on your first point that you lose touch with reality entirely. How closely did you look at downtown Sheringham? Did you really fail to notice that it contains fewer than a dozen shops that might be harmed by the presence of a Tesco? We have at the moment two small food stores, two butchers, three fruiterers, two fishmongers, and two bakeries. I make that eleven shops, and not even all of those would close. One butcher and one fruiterer at least would certainly survive, just as they have done in Cromer despite the presence of a Morrisons, and probably more food shops than that. Efficient, attractive, and specialised food retailers would certainly have survived. All of the other businesses in Sheringham trade in areas that would not be affected by the competition of a cheap food store at all, that is, more than 90% of all the shops and service providers in Sheringham. Now even if I have missed some, in terms of the number of shop closures that might have ensued, we are still talking in SINGLE FIGURES here. Even those shops that did close would soon be replaced by others, more appropriate to the needs of the community. What Sheringham doesn't need, what no town needs, is a surplus of small, inefficient, high-priced food shops in its town centre. There is so much else that we need here. How about a second dentist, a Specsavers, a lighting shop, a sports shop, a jeweller? The list is endless. So much for your argument that the 'vitality and viability of Sheringham town centre' would be harmed by the presence of a Tesco. In fact the very reverse is the truth. Moreover, the cost of replacing our own community centre, fire station, and manse, which Tesco would have paid for, together with fighting the Tesco appeal, will be well over one million pounds. It is an absolute scandal that this amount of public money should be spent just to save the skins of some half dozen inefficient downtown traders. What sort of local government have we got here? They seem to be devoting all of their efforts towards diminishing the town's car parking spaces, and closing its toilets! We who were pro-Tesco always knew that we were the majority of the town. A properly conducted referendum would have proved this, but whatever its outcome it would have settled the issue quickly, cheaply, and finally. This was a glaringly obvious solution, and yet we were consistently denied a referendum. Now why was that, do you think? Instead we had twelve years of dithering and bickering, culminating in a £200,000 bill to council tax payers to fight a Tesco appeal, which was never what the majority wanted in the first place. Is this bad government, or what? Since this issue has come to the fore, highlighting the inadequacies of Sheringham, we in the majority have been given a disincentive to use the local shops. My wife and I will certainly step up our trips to Cromer. We in the pro-Tesco majority made less fuss than the ravers because we never imagined for one moment that a group of people jumping up and down and screaming could possibly win the day against rational argument. But it seems that, under your auspice, they could.

    I must now turn to consider the most serious consequences of your decision. Sheringham is a town in decline: in fact it is dying, which in part explains the hysteria of some local shopkeepers. Several businesses are currently up for sale. Numerous hotels here have closed, to be turned into old people's homes and retirement flats. High spending tourists are being replaced by the low spending elderly. This is because Sheringham has, at the moment, nothing to attract people in. It is a rotten shopping centre, with no attractive shops at all. It offers neither the style of Holt nor the value for money and great range of facilities offered by Cromer. It has, for example, a large high-priced hardware shop that still sells tin baths (I kid you not) and closes at lunchtime and on Wednesday afternoons! I have heard Sheringham described as 'an appallingly backward little Hicksville that desperately needs to be dragged into the twentieth, never mind the twenty-first century'. I can see their point: the supermarket was, after all, a twentieth-century invention. Moreover, the town is entirely outclassed by nearby Cromer. Not only does Cromer have a Morrisons, it also has an Argos, a Boots, a Homebase, a pier, a Travis Perkins, a Jewson, a proper theatre, a proper cinema, the Council offices, a pitch and putt green, a boating lake, a zoo, a hospital, and squash courts. It also has a beach that is permanently sandy at all states of the tide, and an attractive seafront. Sheringham has none of these things. At high tide the beach is nothing but cobbles, and at low tide a range of sharp rocks lurks just two or three feet below the surface, ready to shred anyone who tries to swim. This applies to all of Sheringham beach. Believe me, I've tried it. Sheringham seafront is a disgrace, little improved recently by a pathetic attempt to paint fish on its crumbling concrete facades. A town with as little going for it as Sheringham has simply can't afford to be the only market town in Norfolk with no supermarket as well. It is at the moment just the unattractive little 'piggy in the middle' between Cromer and Holt.

    How could you possibly have failed to see how desperately Sheringham needed that Tesco? Let's just think rationally for a moment, shall we? First of all, a Tesco would really have put Sheringham on the map, and at last have made it a big draw for all of the surrounding area. It would have provided 182 additional car parking spaces, with a walkway through to the town centre. Your argument (pp. 6-7) that the walkway would not be sufficiently visible was a truly pathetic one. People would shop regularly at Tesco, and the walkway would soon become known to all: moreover, it would certainly be used. At the moment my wife and I, like the rest of the car-owning majority here, spend most of our money in Cromer. We are drawn there by the Morrisons, but when we go we make a day of it. We have lunch there, and visit other Cromer shops. It would be utterly astonishing if people using that Tesco car park were not drawn to use the walkway, by curiosity if nothing else, and once in town they would probably buy something there, even if that had not been their original intention in coming to Sheringham. They might at least have stayed for lunch, as we do in Cromer. ALL of the shops in Sheringham would have benefited from this trade. I say again, at the moment there is absolutely NOTHING to draw people into Sheringham. If your intention was to turn Sheringham into a dormitory suburb of Cromer, then you have certainly made a good job of it. For example, when my wife and I came here we found that Sheringham's one dentist was taking no new patients, so we had to register in Cromer (3 dentists) for our dental treatment.

    Permit me to conjure for you the following hypothetical scenario. Let us imagine that there existed somewhere a small market town about the same size as Sheringham, perhaps Cromer for instance, which had just the one supermarket within its bounds. Then, one day, an Inspector from Bristol turned up and said, 'Look here you people, in my opinion I think you would all be much better off without your supermarket. So what I am going to do is pull it down, and erect some shoddy, decrepit buildings on the site instead. But don't worry, you can soon replace these at your own expense: simply put the council tax up. Meanwhile, you can all just rely on your small, overpriced local shopkeepers to supply your everyday needs. You see, I think this will add to the vibrancy and vitality of your town centre, and I'm sure you'll all be much happier that way.' Can you imagine the reaction? The uproar, the riots, the lynch mobs out in the streets? Why, even today's SCAMROD people would be up in arms. Are WE supposed to find this situation acceptable, simply because it is already the status quo in Sheringham? You see, it's always the same old story: there is always an alarmist outcry every time a Tesco is proposed: all sorts of prejudices and lunatic fears come to the surface, whipped on by a well organised group of self-interested local shopkeepers. But once the supermarket is there, people thank their stars that they've got one, and can't imagine life without it. If only you people at the Planning Inspectorate could just appreciate that basic point, this world might be a better place. I have to spell all this out to you lest you should, in future, blight some other hapless community by depriving them of their supermarket as well.

    This brings me on to parking spaces. These are the very life blood of the commerce of a town, a point that Cromer and Holt understand very well. Both are looking to extend their parking areas, Holt to the south of the town, and Cromer to the east. Nobody wants to visit a town where they think there will be parking problems. However, thanks to your decision, we will now eventually have a second Budgens dumped on our town's main car park, just as soon as some legal technicalities are sorted out. This is because everybody, even the local traders, agrees that we need a bigger food shop here, and the town's car park is now the only available site for it. But a Budgens, as you say yourself, 'does not offer a realistic alternative to a larger store' (p. 4). I'll say it doesn't. Have you seen their prices? No wonder the local traders want a Budgens. It will of course be no more of a draw to Sheringham than their Budgens is to Holt, which, as you note, supplies only 'basket purchases' (p. 4). But the real tragedy will be the loss of precious car parking spaces, which will do more than anything else to strangle the trade of Sheringham. The town is squeezed in tight between its railway line and the sea, and space is at a great premium. There is now no other place for a food store to go apart from the town's main car park. Instead of getting the 182 extra spaces that Tesco would have provided, we will now LOSE at least 100 spaces to the worthless Budgens. Even that might not be the end of the matter. Local traders are not the only ones with good pals on NNDC - the North Norfolk Railway is also in very great favour there, and they want to extend tracking and an extra platform onto that same car park. That really would sound the death knell for Sheringham. But they have already been given permission to build some extra tracking, and a level crossing over our main street. This might have been tolerable, but for your decision.

Had I but world enough and time, I could relate to you endless accounts given to me by the old, the poor, the handicapped, and those without cars in Sheringham who are now bitterly disappointed by your decision. North Norfolk is an area of high child poverty. The children are poor because their parents are poor. These are the very people who can least afford to pay the rapidly rising food prices that we now see in our shops: their need for a good, competitive local supermarket has never been greater than at this present time. But in Sheringham they are forced to pay the local high prices because of their transport difficulties. Let me give you some price comparisons: one large wholemeal loaf at Morrisons, 85 p., at Budgens of Sheringham £1.24: 1 litre of organic milk at Morrisons 98 p., at Budgens £1.10: 12 fresh medium eggs at Morrisons, £1.19, at Budgens £1.49: 250 gm. Lurpack butter at Morrisons £1.25, at Budgens £1.38, 500 gm. Cornflakes at Morrisons £1.18, at Budgens £1.69. When the deluded minority here shrieked, 'Save our Sheringham' THIS is the Sheringham that they were saving. These price differentials might seem trivial to the affluent and mobile, but if you are poor and stuck in Sheringham they are absolutely horrendous. Even young families with just one car are handicapped if the husband has to use the car to get to work, thereby forcing the wife to use the expensive local shops for her daily needs. These people are not good at organising themselves into pressure groups, and they are not members of the town's Masonic Lodge. They have no way of making their voices heard. They badly needed somebody to speak up for them. They needed you to speak up for them.

Every time we visited Morrisons at Cromer, we found the car park peppered with vehicles sporting 'Save our Sheringham' stickers in their back windows: presumably SCAMROD people. Well, if they had really wanted to 'Save our Sheringham' then the means lay in their own hands. They could simply have shopped in Sheringham. But no: evidently they would rather leave it to the old, the poor, and the less mobile to 'Save our Sheringham', while they themselves waltzed off to Morrisons of Cromer to save their money! You may be sure that these were the self-same wailing, hand-wringing hypocrites who accompanied you on your tours of this area.

At the moment it's all right for the rest of us who have cars and can just ignore Sheringham, but even we remain slightly vulnerable, because Morrisons is the only proper supermarket for many miles around. At the moment they are playing fair and keeping their prices the same as at their other shops, but there is no need for them to do this, as they might soon realise in these difficult times. If Morrisons decides to exploit its monopoly position by raising its prices, what could we do about it? If we do not use that Morrisons, the next nearest supermarkets are at North Walsham (14 miles), Aylsham (16 miles), or Fakenham (18 miles). The whole of this north Norfolk coastal area desperately needs another supermarket. Could you not see that? You say that it is not your function to prevent competition (p. 6), but that is exactly what you have done. The Tesco proposal was Sheringham's last chance to have a supermarket in this area that would actually have been a benefit to the town by providing vital additional parking close to the town centre. Now, a new supermarket will certainly be built somewhere nearby in the near future. The twenty-first century is here, and it is not going to go away: you cannot go on living in a fool's paradise forever. Tesco cannot be the only chain that has noticed the desperate shortage of supermarkets in this area - it is now a prime target zone. But the new supermarket will now be built far from Sheringham town centre: too far for people to be bothered to visit our town as part of their trip. Its impact on Sheringham will therefore be far more damaging than the Tesco proposal would have been. Had Tesco come here, local business people would have thought, 'Hey, Sheringham, great! Plenty of parking and a Tesco to draw people in. That's the place for my business!' This is exactly what is happening right now in Stalham, where the local Tesco provides three hours of free parking for all vehicles: businesses are piling into the town. But how attractive is Sheringham now? Change is the first law of the universe. Communities, like species, must adapt to survive, and change with the times. But Sheringham is not adapting.

In short, in order to protect the interests of a tiny number of traders on Sheringham high street, and again I stress that we are talking SINGLE FIGURES here, you have sacrificed the interests of everyone else who lives in Sheringham and the surrounding area, INCLUDING all of the other trades people of Sheringham, who would certainly have benefited from the draw that Tesco would have provided. Every other town of its size in Norfolk has survived precisely because it has a supermarket. Only Sheringham will now die because you have denied it one. Let me quote to you from the Eastern Daily Press of September 12, 2008. The village of Stalham is often cited as an example of a town ruined by the presence of a Tesco, but this is what the paper reported of Stalham (p. 2).

'There was a huge outcry over the original Tesco scheme, and opponents have claimed that it killed off high street shops. But the company argued that the closures were down to a decline in the town caused by the death of its cattle market, and that the Tesco was actually helping it to recover. Eric Lindo, chairman of the area's regeneration group, the Stalham with Happing Partnership, agreed, saying the store had already brought 85 jobs to the town and was its biggest employer, while demand for town centre shops was the highest in years.'

A Tesco could have done the same thing for Sheringham, but now what you have done in effect is pronounce a death sentence on the town. Its decline will now continue. It is partly because of this decline that the arguments of those opposed to a Tesco were so emotional, irrational, and hysterical. The local shopkeepers lacked the acumen to see what was in fact in their best interests: they allowed panic to overcome their reason, and whipped up a panic in the town. NNDC councillors too might be excused for being overwhelmed by the local hysteria, although even they should have known better. But what was your excuse? As an impartial outside observer, you were supposed to provide the still, calm voice of reason, and to act in the best interests of the community as a whole, not in the interests of a tiny handful of shopkeepers. Should you not have exercised a more balanced and rational sense of judgment on this occasion?

Yours sincerely,

J.R. Wordie (Dr.)

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