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Tesco Hypermarket Store in 4-5 Years PDF Print E-mail
Supermarket Debate
Written by John Eager   
Friday, 22 July 2011 12:40

Tesco grocers expects to have its new hypermarket store on Leadon Way by 2016.

Kevin Rowse, who sells advertising space for Windsor Associates, was told yesterday by Tesco press officer Sophie Akokhia that Tesco expects to have their new Ledbury hypermarket built in 4-5 years.

 

 

Tesco has resubmitted its plans (as reported by the Ledbury Portal and the Ledbury Reporter) but the application is not yet valid.

Windsor Associates is a Tesco affiliated marketing company that provides local business advertising in Tesco supermarkets. Its salesman Kevin Rowse is telling businesses that Tesco is planning to refurbish its current store in January next year and is not planning to leave that store for some years.

At least three local shopkeepers have been assured by the marketing company that Tesco will not be relocating in the near future, nor within the two year marketing contract that they would sign with Windsor Associates.

Tesco may be expecting their initial planning applications to fail, but will look to 2016 when the population will increase as new houses will have been built in Ledbury.

In Herefordshire Council's 'Town Centre Summary and Planning Policy Review' there is a particularly interesting, but somewhat cryptic sentence: "Ledbury retains a high proportion of residents' available convenience goods (food) expenditure, but has limited potential for new convenience goods floorspace until 2016, some 650 sq m (gross), which will increase up to 1,581 sq m (gross) over the forecast period."

The review does not say what is happening in 2016, nor does it say how or where this extra retail floorspace will come from.

Perhaps the secret meetings Tesco has had with local councilors centred on the proposed housing development at the viaduct and how to meet the retail needs of Ledbury's expanding population. Or perhaps not. They were secret and the mayor and his councilors were sworn to silence by a clandestine corporation.

Last Updated on Thursday, 03 November 2011 13:55