Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets. Joanna Blythman
there is a presumption against supermarket developments on out-of-town sites and local authorities must safeguard local shops in their development plans.
In the twenty-first century, supermarket chains face tighter planning controls than they did in the previous one. In theory, it is currently quite hard for them to get planning permission for new stores out of town. That is why they have largely turned their attention to the inner cities where they are looking to expand into ‘brownfield’ sites. Such sites have previously been built on and are usually in an advanced state of dilapidation, and so proposed developments do not attract the same objections as a new superstore on a greenfield site would. On the other hand, because a new supermarket on a brownfield site must fit into an already developed urban area, it is subject to a number of detailed and more specific planning considerations that do not always apply to out-of-town sites: the impact on local views, congestion of small streets, noise and light pollution and so on.
On paper anyway, there are grounds for local authorities to refuse permission for a new supermarket. But more often than not, our supermarket chains succeed. Of 170 supermarket planning applications submitted in the UK in the three years to 31 March 2003, 83 (49 per cent) were approved, 33 (19 per cent) were rejected or withdrawn and 54 (32 per cent) were still pending at the time of writing. John Sweeney, leader of North Norfolk District Council, summed up the dilemma faced by local authorities. ‘They are too big and powerful for us. If we try and deny them they will appeal, and we cannot afford to fight a planning appeal and lose. If they got costs it could bankrupt us.’ Supermarkets simply don’t like to take no for an answer, and come back with one revised plan after another, until they get their way.
Stopping or even seeking to downsize a new supermarket development is a daunting task. No wonder really organised community opposition is rare. As one pro-supermarket commentator sanguinely put it:
At the end of the day, most planning authorities have bowed to a combination of consumer apathy – or even tacit support for the new supermarket sites – and the ability of retailers to ‘sweeten the pill’ on their arrival in a new locality … Key local aspirations that had seemed too expensive to fulfil – cleaning up derelict areas, building sports fields and social centres were favourites – gained crucial new support. Hundreds of new jobs were immediately created. The only losers were the collections of locally owned high street stores which had been fighting a losing battle for custom with prices that were perceived as too high, parking that was inadequate and service that appeared and indeed often was both slow and old-fashioned. Furthermore, it was usually months or even years after the new superstore’s arrival that the downside consequences became apparent.
Nowadays supermarket chains know that they have a better chance of securing planning consent for a new store if they parcel it up in a mixed development. The Town and Country Planning Act recognises the concept of ‘planning gain’ or elements included in a planning application to make an application more attractive to local authorities. It allows for what are known as Section 106 agreements. A council and supermarket chain can agree that certain work must be carried out before permission can be granted. For example, the supermarket might have to pay for trees to be replanted, traffic lights moved and roads relaid, or sports facilities provided. Often these take the form of sizeable cash payments from the would-be supermarket developer to the council. Using Section 106 agreements, supermarkets have the perfect sweetener to dangle before local authorities. Developers talk excitedly of ‘synergies’ with supermarkets that might make possible what previously seemed like unprofitable developments. Supermarkets, arm in arm with property developers, can act as sugar daddies to the community, even to the extent of getting permission for out-of-centre developments that would otherwise be out of the question.
In Coventry in 2000, Tesco won planning consent for one of its biggest stores in the country by agreeing to part-fund a new stadium. ‘Sometimes the value of the land is enough to push the deal,’ said a Tesco spokesperson; ‘sometimes you have to build the stadium.’
In 2003, a property consortium submitted a planning application for a stadium for Wimbledon Football Club near Bletchley and Milton Keynes. This new 30,000-seat stadium and 6,500-seat arena would be part-financed or enabled by a 100,000-square-foot Asda Wal-Mart Supercentre, the largest Asda format. The consortium’s website aimed at encouraging locals to write letters to council planners in support of the plan was headed, ‘Dreams can become a reality for Milton Keynes and Bletchley.’ The consortium’s chairman, Pete Winkleman, argued the case as follows: ‘Milton Keynes needs an international stadium. Wimbledon FC needs a home. Asda needs a store in the largest city in the UK where it doesn’t already have one. Bletchley needs a major investment scheme to kickstart its regeneration … Without the stadium, without a revitalised Bletchley, without Wimbledon FC, Milton Keynes remains incomplete. Without Asda none of it happens.’
The more desirable elements that go into the development mix the better, and housing, as well as sport, is usually a winner. In 2003, Tesco announced its plans to build 3–4,000 affordable homes nationwide. Among these were an application for a development in Streatham, South London, where it wanted to build a complex which would include a leisure centre, Tesco store and 250 homes, 40 per cent of which would be for key workers. In Romford, Essex, Sainsbury’s new superstore was part of a mixed-use development that included housing, a health club, restaurants, a bowling alley and cinemas.
Just as they were being accused of taking away business from town centres and encouraging traffic by means of such projects, supermarkets have reinvented themselves as urban regenerators with pockets deep enough to make long-cherished community goals possible. As The Grocer noted archly: ‘Regeneration projects can gain speedy approval from councils and local communities. A whole regeneration package, promising mixed use development … is likely to prove far more attractive to planners than just a plain old superstore.’ Our large supermarket chains’ enormous retail power certainly provides them with the money to make things happen. But the downside of these carrot-and-stick regeneration packages is that they are another way in which supermarkets are insinuating themselves into all aspects of our lives, embedding themselves deeper and deeper in our manmade landscape and hence our consciousness. In Kilmarnock in Scotland, for example, certain areas of the town are listed in local bus timetables according to the supermarket chain that dominates them: Wester Netherton has become Kwik Save and Scott Ellis has become Asda.
The supermarkets are happy to bask in their role as the new civic developers as long as they get their pound of retail flesh. But the price for planners and their communities is that they may have to say yes to a new store when they would otherwise prefer to say no. Where once people strolled in the park, or walked around the local duck pond, a day out in our supermarket-saturated country is beginning to mean a visit to a shopping and leisure centre of which a supermarket is an integral part. Naturally, supermarket chains are keen to promote their stores as places in which to while away leisure time. Under the headline ‘Everyone Asda have a hobby’, the freesheet Metro told the story of septuagenarian Richard Bunn who, after enjoying a bargain all-day breakfast at his local store in Weston-Super-Mare, had made his hobby visiting Asda stores. When he had travelled some 100,000 miles to visit all its stores in Britain, Asda grasped the public relations opportunity and asked Mr Bunn to open a new store in Oldbury in the West Midlands. ‘I know people think I’m batty but I love Asda and once I decided to visit every store, I became a man with a mission,’ Mr Bunn told assembled press.
If an obdurate local authority says no to a supermarket development, even if it is cloaked in a halo of urban revitalisation, supermarkets have further avenues to pursue. The original foot-in-the-door tactic was to construct smaller stores – which are more likely to get planning permission – that just happened to have ridiculously large numbers of parking places. This built in a generous margin of surplus land for future extensions. A few