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Residents to boycott rival supermarkets in high street triangle
Anna Davis, Evening Standard25.04.08
A high street could be swamped by three big supermarkets operating within yards of each other.
Tesco and Asda are both planning to open stores in New Barnet - on the same road where a Sainsbury's already trades. Residents fear the trio will kill off small businesses and bring traffic chaos. Some threatened at a public meeting to boycott the two new supermarkets.
Councillor Robert Rams said: "The three supermarkets will be in a triangle and I dread to think how we will cope with it." He said there were fears over the future of nearby East Barnet village, home to many independent shops, and added: "It is going to be hellish. The residents do not want or need another supermarket, let alone two. The proposals could signal the nail in the coffin to a local way of life."
Sue Young, of Edward Road, New Barnet, said: "We are going to fight the proposals all the way and will boycott the supermarkets if they come here."
London Assembly member Brian Coleman, who supports the Evening Standard Save Our Small Shops campaign, said: "This is supermarket wars gone mad."
Tesco spokesman James Wigan said: "It is early days."
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The traffic problems will be a nightmare; but hard to have sympathy for at least some of the surrounding small businesses; particularly those in adjoining streets who actively encourage the anti-social behaviour of the local 'yoof' by offering them a place to congregate. Now all the hoodies can hang around in Tescos car park!
- Barnet Boy, New Barnet
I must say its jolly heartening to read that London Assembly Member: Brian Coleman is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the good people of New Barnet over these unwelcome, traffic-generating development proposals.
Only last year he was heavily involved in a campaign over another traffic-generating scheme in New Barnet - a road that was planned to be built over a conservation area and across the Metropolitan Open Land of a primary school playing field, right next to the green belt of Hadley Woods.
He wanted it built.
Indeed, such was Cllr Coleman’s appetite for destruction that he went as far as labelling his constituents objecting to the scheme as ‘idiots’ and ‘the usual Nimby brigade’ – grubbily implying that our opposition was founded in anti-Semitism rather than in conservation.
Has he now, as we approach the election, joined ‘the usual Nimby brigade’?
Sincerely
- John, New Barnet
