Action Briefing Dec 2002 - Jan 2003
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

West Midlands News

Walsall's Supermarket Sweeping Victory

Walsall FoE have achieved victory in their battle to stop Tesco moving out of their town centre store (which has no car parking and so serves the broadest community, particularly the socially disadvantaged) and replacing it with an out of town store beyond the Ring Road with a huge car park and a shuttle bus as a sop to sustainable travel.

Despite Tescos offering substantial ‘regeneration’ side benefits for the town John Prescott rejected the case put by Tesco and said they couldn’t go ahead. He told them they couldn’t bend the distance rules to pretend it was an edge of centre store; that they hadn’t proved the regeneration side benefits couldn’t be provided in other ways and said he wasn’t convinced there was enough extra trade to sustain it without other stores like Sainsburys and Safeways being effected in the town centre.

Walsall FOE are not calling on the Council to give up its aspiration for retail development and use the site to help fulfil housing targets and so be able to remove from the Unitary Development Plan (which is going to Inquiry next year) extra land set aside in sensitive areas of countryside in the Green belt around the town.

But Walsall FOE are not going to be allowed to rest on their laurels. Ikea have an application in to extend their store on Junction 9 of the M6, (on top of their new proposals at Longbridge to capture the market to the South of the region). Despite John Prescott’s welcome decision to reject their Stockport application, Ikea seem intent on pursuing the least sustainable and car-based options for selling their goods.

Chris Crean