Unwanted supermarket expansion our local high streets is posing a real threat to independent traders and creating the risk of a supermarket monopoly over our food supply.
The Scottish Government must take urgent and decisive action to address this new problem, which has been escalating over the last few years. Tesco and the other major supermarkets (Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Waitrose, M&S etc.) are continuing to open more smaller ‘Express’ and ‘Local’ stores on our local high streets, because they do not require the same planning permission as larger stores. These smaller supermarkets are now competing directly with independent grocers, newsagents and convenience stores which would have normally been independently owned and run.
In areas where there is already good access to other local food suppliers / grocers, these new supermarkets are clearly not wanted by local communities and yet they currently seem powerless to stop them. The proliferation of these new supermarkets is causing the homogenisation of once vibrant and distinct parts of Scotland, and is having a devastating effect on local economies. Independent traders are being forced to close whilst profits haemorrhage out of Scotland to the supermarket's shareholders in other parts of the UK and abroad.
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This Scotland-wide petition to the Scottish Parliament has resulted from the frustrations of two local communities in the West End of Glasgow who have found themselves powerless in stopping two new Tesco ‘Express’ stores opening on their local high streets. This is despite the fact that these two new stores are within two-mile area in which nine new Tesco stores have already opened within in the last few years.
Local residents and businesses in the Kelvinbridge, Yorkhill and Hyndland areas of the city joined forces with the name Say NO to Tesco! to present a similar petition to Glasgow City Council Petitions Committee Meeting on 3 September 2013, in the hope of preventing these two new Tesco stores from opening and influencing Glasgow’s new Local Development Plan in order to prevent further unwanted supermarket expansion on our local high streets.
At the Petitions Committee meeting it became apparent that all the key planning documents (Glasgow’s City Plan 2, National Planning Framework, the Scottish Planning Policy) already do place an emphasis on preserving and enhancing the ‘distinct identities’ of local high streets and on encouraging ‘sustainable development’. However local councils and communities do not seem to have the legislative power to uphold these ambitions and are powerless to stop more unwanted ‘Express’ and ‘Local’ supermarkets from opening in the future.
Following the opening of Tesco 'Express' on Queen Margaret Drive in Glasgow in 2011:
- Queen Margaret Store Licensed Newsagents are having to consider closing their 22 year-old family business after a 70% loss in profits.
- Western Newsagent, run by Mr Sultan, has similarly suffered a 70% loss in profits and has been forced to reduce employees’ hours by 93%. Mr Sultan has had to reduce his stock orders by more than half because he no longer has the finances to buy the amount and variety of stock he used to purchase, affecting his local suppliers in turn. This reduction in amount and variety of stock is responsible for further loss of customers as he is not always able to provide wanted items.
Small food retailers on Byres Road, Maryhill Road, and Queen Margaret Drive express dismay and frustration at the current planning process which has allowed the development of Tesco stores (Express and Metro in particular) without due consultation and assessments of impact by Glasgow City Council.
We are therefore calling on the Scottish Parliament to change legalisation so that local councils do have this power to actively support local independent traders and discriminate against supermarket giants when necessary.
The national campaign group TESCOPOLY was founded in 2005 to create awareness of negative impact Tesco and the other big supermarkets have on local communities. We have been in touch with them for support and have used their website and book for much of our research: www.tescopoly.org
- Tesco already have more than 3,000 stores and take 1/8th of all the money we spend on
shopping in the UK. - Together with all the other big supermarkets they control over 86% of the UK grocery market.
- And yet they still want more!