High street traders in town fight to halt new superstore

The blueprint for a site in Mexborough, near Doncaster, is the latest in a series of applications across Yorkshire which have caused controversy, and led to accusations that local shops are being abandoned.

In Mexborough a protest group called Save the High Street has been formed, which undertook a survey of 115 business. Its co-ordinator Hattie Norman said 92 responded and said they opposed the development.

Mrs Norman, who runs a shop in Mexborough’s indoor market hall, said: “We just feel that we have to try and do something to stop this and we will be speaking at the planning meeting in Doncaster on Tuesday.

“If this supermarket is built there is no doubt that it will divert most of the shoppers away from our little High Street and its shops, which are only just managing to hold on as it is.”

The plans have been drawn up by national firm Kier Property Developers and no retailer has been confirmed, although Mrs Norman said locals believed the firm involved was Tesco.

If the outline scheme is passed, it will pave the way for the conversion of a former carpet warehouse site near to the town’s railway station, into a supermarket with an associated car park and petrol filling station.

The campaign to stop the supermarket proposal is being supported by the South Yorkshire Branch of the Federation of Small Businesses, which has campaigned nationally against major supermarket expansion.

Sheffield-based chairman Andrew Flower said: “The UK independent retail sector is in freefall. Across the country, the average number of shop closures has reached 12,000 annually. 40 per cent of the country’s independent shops have closed in the last three years.

“By far the most dangerous threat to the future of the retail trade is the proliferation of the ‘big four’ supermarkets, which have gained a destructive dominance of the retail sector.

“Their alarming spread has brought about more retail closures than any other single factor. They have become an insidious threat to the survival of thousands of small independent retail firms.

“Every time a new supermarket opens, it reduces the revenue of small businesses for miles around and the inevitable result is the closure of private retailers.

“Any sense of local colour and diversity is thus lost from the retailing community, to be replaced by the bland ‘sameness’ the supermarkets offer.

“Once-thriving district and local shopping centres have in many cases been driven into dereliction by supermarket saturation, and the closure of post offices and local bank branches has added to the burden of local shop owners struggling to survive.

“Once one or two units close and get boarded up, dereliction spreads like a contagion and a whole row of local shops can fall into decay in no time.”

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