Four supermarkets have expressed an interest in building a store on Westbridge Park as part of Stafford Borough Council’s plans to revamp leisure facilities at the site, it has emerged, with their requirements ranging from 15,000 to 55,000 sq ft.
This and more details have emerged of the council’s plans for Westbridge Park that they will be consulting on in the New Year.
Town councillor Rob Kenney, who set up the Keep Westbridge Park Green petition and campaign, has obtained the borough council’s project brief for the Westbridge Park consultation through a Freedom of Information request.
You can read the full document HERE. Take note, the dates in the brief for the consultation have slipped – the consultation is taking place in the New Year, not between September and December this year as the document states.
Here’s a summary of the main points:
Stafford Borough Council has received expressions of interest from four supermarkets interested in Westbridge Park, with requirements ranging from 15,000 to 55,000 sq ft gross. These came from the council’s development consultant GVA carrying out informal market testing of the major food supermarkets not represented in the town.
The brief states, however, that other forms of development – not just supermarkets – that will generate sufficient capital receipts to fund new community and leisure facilities will be considered.
The council has commissioned architects to produce indicative layouts for Westbridge Park, “principally to test the feasibility of accommodating a leisure facility, health centre and medium-sized supermarket on the available land”. Rob Kenney, writing on the Keep Westbridge Park Green blog, says a Freedom of Information request has been submitted to obtain these layouts. He also asks the question: “Why didn’t they bring them along to the Alleyne’s meeting in November?”
It reiterates the Council’s desire for a new leisure centre on Westbridge Park with 25m pool. The brief states that the consultation may test public opinion on an alternative site – Tilling Drive adjacent to the A34 – for a new leisure centre. No alternative site for a supermarket or other “enabling development” is mentioned.
The brief states that discussions have been ongoing for a number of months with Public Health England concerning GP facilities in Stone. It says: “There is an ambition to bring together two existing GP surgeries onto a new site, and Public Health England’s preference is for Westbridge Park. Funding for the Public Health England proposal is unclear and will need to be tested in advance of the public consultation.”
The brief admits that there will be “resistance” to the plans unless community events like Stone Festival, bonfire and the Food & Drink Festival can be accommodated. It states: “The Council intends as part of these proposals to develop the concept of a new town park/special events area for such events. The space requirements for these uses need to be tested as part of the consultation”.
Again, you can see the full project brief for the consultation HERE
5 comments
Allan Skerratt
Business Studies students are taught the ‘Tesco’
business model as an example of how aggressive multinational companies
operate. Tescos is a massive organisation if it was a country it would be about 6 or 7 richest in the world. So here is how it works Tescos build a supermarket in your town. To get you to come in it slices a small percentage of the profits of all its other
stores to subsidise prices of the goods in your town. So you get loads of BOGOF offers and thingsare really cheap.
Any competitor stores lose business and decline and finally shut down. Once there are no competitor stores Tescos take away all the special offers because you have nowhere else to go. Other big Multinational stores do it as well.
Longton has a massive Tescos as does Stafford. Look how other shops in Longton have declined. look how many empty shops there are. How many charity shops. How frequently shops start up then close down. Over 40 empty shops in Stafford about the same in Longton.
Ben Alcock
Over 40 shops vacant in Stafford? Stafford vacancy rate is currently at 8% much better than the national average and far better than a number of other towns and cities within the area. In addition, Stafford is currently witnessing a large inward investment from LXB Properties for the development of a new Marks and Spencers etc…. so I do not share the same doom and gloom you seem to have with regard to Stafford. Your argument that Supermarkets destroy towns is flawed – recent studies suggest that it is out of town developments and the failure of the high street to adapt to e and m commerce that is causing the decline in the high street not the Supermarket. Clearly supermarkets can cause some local shops to decline, because often these independant retailers can not compete. It is for this reason that these small independant retailers should be adapting there operations, rather than blaming the supermarkets. If these small independant retailers try to compete with the supermarket on cost, then clearly they will be at a disadvantage. Therefore they should be aiming to offer the customer something the supermarket can not i.e a better quality product, knowledgable staff, and a different type of shopping service. A cake shop in Stafford offers the customers delicous cup cakes and runs knitting classes etc once a week, this business is thriving and is putting the enjoyment back into the high street and encouraging people to shop in the high street.
Furthermore, as stated by a number of residents of Stone, they leave Stone to do the shopping in Stafford and Longton becuase they are unable to do there shopping in stone for a variety of reasons. To rejuvenate the high street, you need more people to spend in the high street and the way to do this is to obviously encourage residents to shop where they live. This is stated in the Mary Portas report, which goes onto state that an improved leisure and retail provision within towns will actually help the high street. Your insistence and Cllr Kenney instenence that supermarkets and leisure should be built outside of towns will merely push more residents out of town to these developments.
In summary, Stone requires a new supermarket by 2015 – you either situate this outside of town and encourage more people to drive out of town, or you build it in a central convenient location so customers can shop in the supermarket and in the town at the same time and take account of the free car parking (something Stafford BC believes is a contributing factor to encourage greater footfall). Finally supermarkets are not the enemy, they are a necessary evil and therefore the high streets needs to adapt to meet the challenge.
mark
Nick do you honestly expect a full disclosure of all the conversations that are taking place between the Council and the interested supermarkets? You seem to suggest that local residents should know absolutely everything. That is impossible because there are commerical interests to protect etc. Trust the BC to make an informed decision.
Nick Tucker
Bottom of page 4
“Any proposals to develop this site will be the subject of media and political interest. There will be undoubted concern over the loss of green space. The plans and proposals contained within this brief are not all currently within the public domain, so any discussions and consultations will need to be dealt with sensitively.”
To put it another way, some of what they are proposing is SECRET! How can they possibly have an honest consultation?