Sandy 4 St Albans

I am very heartened at the news that Tesco has given into public pressure and withdrawn a plan to build a superstore at Tolworth, near Kingston, Surrey.

There are many parallels with St Albans. The Tolworth site is also located on a congested highway, and local residents protested about the impact on nearby residential and shopping streets.

This shows that public protest can work.
I congratulate the “Tolworth Residents against Overdevelopment” campaign group on their victory.

I plan to learn from their experience by meeting Lib Dem MP Ed Davey in
whose constituency the Tolworth development was scheduled to take
place. He was a leading opponent of the Tesco scheme there.

Intriguingly, Tesco has not withdrawn from the Tolworth site. It has
issued a statement saying:

Rather than push forward with the original
application, we have decided to give local people a greater opportunity
to participate in the development of this prominent location. Tesco
will remain an important part of these plans, but we would like to
redesign our plans with the help of local people.

Amen to that, say I.  What’s good for Tolworth would be good for St
Albans too.

There is no reason why Tesco should not make a commercial
success of their site, but by consulting with local residents on a
multi-use scheme of appropriate scale rather than dropping a nuclear
bomb onto the centre of St Albans.

For those that want them, we have produced a rather eye-catching poster
saying “Stop Tesco” in red and blue. Copies can be downloaded from
www.stoptesco.org.uk which also carries general news about the plan.