At my suggestion, Ledbury Portal has provided the link and I recommend reading the Mary Portas review in full, rather than rely on media reports. [Pages 42-43 should I suggest be compulsory reading for every local trader in Ledbury.] Also, on the same page as the MP link, there's a link to another report: "Understanding High Street Performance", also worth reading, albeit more technical.

In 2005, I won a prize for my essay on the "Future of Town Centres and retailing" in a competition sponsored by Marks and Spencer. I tackled the subject at essential level and in the light of the MP report I am going to update my essay when I have time. Some of MP's recommendations could be workable but on balance I doubt many if any will be put into action, at least not without a good deal of Government funding. (Interesting MP recommends a National Market Day when in Ledbury the Council has difficulty in attracting enough market traders!)

The main difficulty, as I see it, is the ongoing underlying conflict between socialism and capitalism, as personified in the difference between the public sector and the private sector's objectives and raison d'etre as applied in town centres. Reconcile those objectives or at least get some consensus and you have the recipe for moving forward in a positive way.

In the context of Ledbury, Tesco/Sainsbury's etc, the effect of the conflict is apparent in the division of views and opinions of the merits or otherwise of the application(s) and Ledbury's "High Street."

Contrary to any such thinking, I have no desire to watch Ledbury Town Centre decline, or to be in any way influential or instrumental - the last time Ledbury declined was at the end of 18th century when Ledbury’s era of outstanding prosperity based on the manufacture of woollens had gone and Ledbury reverted to a quiet rural market town. However, unlike those that seem to think one or the other, I believe it is possible to have the best of both worlds: a supermarket out-of-town and a thriving Town Centre. To that goal I am setting my sights.