Tesco supermarket would harm town centre says report

A study commissioned by Thame Town Council has concluded that a large format foodstore, such as that proposed by Tesco, could significantly harm the town centre.

The full Thame Retail Capacity and Impact Study will be discussed at a meeting of  Thame Town Council on Tuesday evening (03/10).  Town Councillors recommended refusal of Tesco’s plans for an edge-of-town supermarket on the current DAF site, on August 25, 2015. The plans are currently with South Oxfordshire District Council but no date has yet been set for a planning decision as the Planning Officer is awaiting revised figures from Tesco of its projected profits from the proposed Thame store, which SODC’s independent consultants believe were ‘under stated’.

The Thame Retail Impact Study’s findings include the observation that food shopping is the principle reason for shoppers in Thame’s primary catchment area visiting the Town Centre, and that 80% of shoppers link their food shopping trip to other activities, in particular for non-food shopping and for financial services like banking.

The report suggests that although a new, edge of town foodstore could help to claw back leaked expenditure from larger shopping centres, turnover would be drawn away from Thame’s key anchor store, Waitrose, as well as from other convenience retailers such as Co-op and Sainsbury, causing linked trips to other shops in Thame to be lost; linked trips that would otherwise have been supported between Waitrose and other town centre businesses.

As the report puts it: “The potential diversion of food shoppers to a competing edge or out-of-centre foodstore will impact on the potential for linked trips. This in turn will impact on the vitality and viability of the wider town centre.”

In its conclusions and recommendations, the impact assessment states that: “.. a smaller format foodstore or a deep discount foodstore (such as Lidl or Aldi) would have a lower impact on the trading performance of the town centre and its retailers. In contrast, the assessment indicates that a larger format traditional foodstore could have a significant harmful impact on the town centre, leading to the potential closure of the existing Co-op store.

The full Thame Retail Capacity & Impact Study, which has been prepared by Carter Jonas, can be read here: LINK TO PDF

You can read all previous posts on the subject of Tesco’s proposals here: LINK