Saturday, October 10

Sainsbury plans for Waterlooville


Recently Sainsburys has revealed plans for a new supermarket store in Waterlooville, on the site of the now closed Salvador Caetano coach builders factory. The site had previously been occupied by Wadham Stringers.

There are a number of alarming issues about this proposal...

1. A lack of legislation and poor planning of the built environment has resulted in our bus network across the UK failing to get people out of their cars. As a result, companies like Caetano have not had enough business to keep the Waterlooville factory open. The Sainsburys proposal in fact just highlights this issue, the Sainsburys proposal for a big store and a car park for over 400 cars, effectively reverses the use of the site from an environmentally positive one to a negative one.

2. Waterlooville already has an Iceland, Asda, Waitrose, an Asda Hypermarket, a Co-op shop in Milton road and a Lidl in Cowplain. On top of this we have 3 butchers in the area, a greengrocer and numerous other shops. All are within cycling and driving distance. Most are actually within reasonable walking distance for anyone living near Waterlooville, with the exception of the Asda hypermarket which probably requires a bus or car to get to. There is basically plenty of choice and competition, the area doesn't need another supermarket. Any council approval for more supermarkets would be to help Sainsburys as a business (read into that what you will) rather than doing what is right for the community and environment.

3. The retail park near the proposed site already causes headaches for pedestrians and cyclists, adding more supermarket capacity will attract more traffic, creating more problems.

4. Supermarkets are dependent on car use. In an alternative history scenario where cars were never invented and people were dependent on their two 'pegs', the likes of Sainsbury, Tesco and even Waitrose would have had to limit themselves to small shops in rural and suburban areas. They could only really survive without cars in densely populated urban areas like Portsmouth. This basically means that their business models run contrary to modern accepted environmentally sustainable ideas, they encourage car use and car emissions.

That's just a few for starters.
We need to stop this endless expansion of the supermarket sector. Calling a halt to this expansion is one step towards returning Waterlooville to the local community and not allowing big corporations continue to take over the area.

Tescopoly

7 comments:

Steve said...

From one perspective - I see this as good, as it add competition to the area and will also create additional local jobs. Though to us, as the bulk of our shopping is delivered to us via Internet Shopping the benefit is negligible.

Sometimes the car is the only option - I had to get 100kg of chicken feed today and the only option is the car.

Speaking of cars ... I am lucky in that I work from home but our children have to go to school via car as the round-trip doesn't make it viable. One of the disadvantages of living in a town vs. a village I guess. It's a shame public transport isn't more attractive to us.

Your reporting of the new bus service to Portsmouth is interesting - perhaps it'll be viable as another experiment for us :)

TheVille said...

Over the last 5 or so decades we have seen swings between a socialist state involvement, then to a market driven culture where competition has ruled.

I don't believe competition works particularly well just for the sake of imposing that ideology. Many councillors and politicians are married to the idea no matter what consequences it has on others or communities. On the other hand, socialism has been just as disastrous.

Apparently the government Planning Policy Statement 6 (PPS6) actually requires councils to identify brown field edge of centre sites that are suitable for stores!

Which really points to central government (New Labour) actually being keen on supermarkets and big stores for economic and tax income reasons. eg. their main interest is to fund their own state projects and keeping the supermarket corporations happy.

Hence, even if local councils wanted to oppose them, the resources available to supermarkets means that councils could not 'compete' and fight back.

Re cars.

I actually once owned a car about 10 years ago. These days I get big stuff (usually DIY materials) delivered by truck. I have even used taxis to get some bags of cement home (with approval of the driver first!).

Another way of dealing with unusual loads is to use a cycle cargo trailer, some can carry about 40kg.

I hope the x42 is a success, I think it should get more publicity. One issue with it is that because it doesn't stop very often, it is more dependent on getting a good load of passengers when it does stop, especially in Portsmouth or Waterlooville.

Anonymous said...

The site they are planning to pit a new Sainsbury's is ridiculous! The carpark and road system struggle at time with the weight of traffic and pedestrians, a supermarket would indeed choke the area. As theville said we have plenty of supermarkets already there would be little point.

Question: where can you get these cycle trailors they look good, are they expensive?

Danners

TheVille said...

Hi Danners,

Portsmouth Cycle Exchange in Southsea were selling cycle cargo trailers.

The trailers attach (hitch) to the bicycle frame and have a flexible joint for going around corners.

Actually I'm sure Argos sell them as well.

Found a link. But Argos is in the Waterlooville Retail Park (grrrr):
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/0363840/Trail/searchtext%3ECYCLE+TRAILER.htm

Also if you search the internet for 'cycle cargo trailers' you'll find others.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Ville, I have been looking into getting one for a while, just a fair amount of money on something that I wasn't sure would work (question is why are they not more popular!)

liked the robert llewelyn btw very interesting guy that windfarm guy

Does anyone here buy their energy through his company or a similar one?

Danners

TheVille said...

I don't think many people actually know that cargo trailers exist for cycles. Which is why you don't see them. However I have seen more now than a few years ago. The good thing is some of them fold up for storage.

I think Ecotricity is one of the best green tariffs.

Another one is Good Energy. There is a bit of rivalry between them. But Ecotricity does actually install new turbines, where as Good Energy buys electricity from existing sources. Thus many people think Ecotricity is better.

They both retire a proportion of there ROCs (renewable obligation certificates), this means they are trying to force other companies to supply more renewables than the government requires them to do. The big companies that offer green tariffs often don't retire ROCs.
So basically Ecotricity and Good Energy encourage more renewables installation.

The other thing is that you know the money you pay is going towards renewables rather than some big cash pot that might end up building a coal fired power station.

TheVille said...

Here are the links to Ecotricity and Good Energy:

http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/
http://www.goodenergy.co.uk/

There are others. eg...

http://www.rspbenergy.co.uk/