Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets - Joanna Blythman

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realise its greater plan. Nowadays the buzz words are ‘space sweating’. Chains ‘sweat assets’ by building mezzanine floors in existing stores where they would not be allowed to extend externally. UK planning law excludes internal building work from the definition of development requiring planning permission. In 2003, Asda Wal-Mart announced its intention to build mezzanine floors in up to forty stores in what Dow Jones International News reported as ‘a way of increasing space amid strict planning laws’. After a successful mezzanine was slotted into its York store, Asda Wal-Mart set about building floors in stores in Sheffield, and Cumbernauld and Govan in Glasgow. In the Sheffield Asda, the mezzanine added 33,000 square feet to the store – almost the same sales area as the largest supermarket now permitted in Ireland. Friends of the Earth blew the whistle. ‘Asda Wal-Mart is making a mockery of planning guidance. By installing mezzanines in existing stores, the company does not even have to submit a planning application to the local authority. This leaves the local authority powerless to assess the impact on local shops or traffic levels and local communities have no say in the development,’ it pointed out. Sheffield MP Clive Betts told the House of Commons that the mezzanine expansion in his constituency had made existing traffic problems worse. ‘Traffic is considerably heavier, yet there has been no analysis or plan to deal with it, because there has been no requirement for the store to sit down with the highways authority and the planning authority to work out these problems, because there is no need for planning permission.’

      Yet another approach is to include housing in proposals for extensions to existing stores. Sainsbury’s, for example, got the go-ahead to extend its Richmond store from an already substantial 55,000 square feet to 63,500 square feet largely because it would build 179 flats on top of the existing store and the extension.

      Our supermarket chains are determined to get planning permission for new stores and extensions to existing ones. And despite the fact that theoretically they now operate in a tricky planning climate, it is amazing how often they get what they want. As Tesco’s finance director told the Daily Telegraph, ‘Planning approvals have not stopped. It’s just more difficult than it used to be. Out of town is very difficult to get but you are seeing brownfield sites redeveloped. Planning changes have not killed development. They have acted to redirect it.’

       6 Pimlico v. Sainsbury’s

      The battle against the building of a Sainsbury’s in Pimlico, on the site of the former Wilton Road bus garage behind Victoria Station, is one of the most high profile ever fought between a local community and a supermarket chain. Behind-the-scenes wheelings and dealings in this controversial case, exposed by the Sunday Times investigative Insight team, made the front page. Simon Jenkins wrote a rousing column in the Evening Standard opposing the development as an unwelcome precedent. ‘The store is big, intrusive and will offer parking, thus contriving to offend every maxim of modern planning … A superstore is a neutron bomb. It wipes out commercial life for streets around, while its parking spaces jam the traffic … Quite apart from encouraging more traffic, most of the new stores are large and ugly. That they may replace ugly gas works or goods yards is no excuse,’ he wrote. The debate continued on BBC2’s Newsnight. It was rare for a local community to make such a stand. But Sainsbury’s got its way in the end.

      Local residents first got wind of the proposal in 1995. Sainsbury’s had been smart. It had got together with a housing association to put forward a mixed development for a superstore with flats built above it. Half these flats would be private, but the other half would be low-cost, affordable housing, of which there was a serious shortage in the area. This type of housing had been given the highest priority in the local council’s (Westminster) development plan.

      Opposing a supermarket pure and simple was one thing; opposing one linked with such a desirable sweetener to the local council was another. The proposed site was in an area zoned for retail development, so residents’ organisations, sensing that all-out opposition was fruitless, set themselves the more reasonable task of trying to get the Sainsbury’s plan cut down to the right scale for the site.

      They seemed to be on strong ground. Despite its proximity to Victoria, Pimlico is a low-rise, densely populated district, part of which is a formal conservation area. The taller buildings are no more than five or six storeys high. It conforms very well to the notion of the ‘urban village’ that today’s planners are keen to support as an antidote to the ‘Anytown, Anywhere’ big-box development that strips life and character from urban centres. The planning brief for the area was that buildings should be a maximum of six storeys. In this respect, the scale and height of the proposed development – which was to rise to eleven storeys – seemed totally out of keeping. When one sees the finished development, one local architect’s prophecy that it would be ‘like having a cross channel ferry in a yacht marina’ appears totally justified. As Moy Scott, secretary of Pimlico FREDA, the umbrella group for sixteen active residents’ associations, put it, ‘it seemed as though Sainsbury’s was bringing Victoria to Pimlico’.

      The new store would mean more lorries and new car traffic too. It would receive twenty-five deliveries a day, necessitating fifty trips in and out through narrow streets more suited to small cars and bicycles. Already a badly parked delivery van was enough to cause a jam. Sainsbury’s had also admitted that it expected 90 per cent of the store’s customers to be drawn in from outside Pimlico – Victoria, Mayfair, St James, the City and Chelsea. Inevitably such shoppers would be attracted by the spacious underground car park that was to be built.

      Residents were upset not only by the height and bulk of the development and the traffic implications for surrounding streets but also by the impact it would surely have on local shops. Pimlico is relatively unusual in that it has a network of small shops, only a handful of which belong to chains. These independent shops are concentrated in and around Tachbrook Street, the traditional heart of the area, home to a daily market selling fish, fruit and vegetables since 1877. Pre-Sainsbury’s, the selection of some 165 shops was one that any urban area would envy. Whether you wanted to buy a newspaper, have keys cut, find freshly ground Parmesan, pick up a bouquet of flowers, get a prescription or source the ingredients for a special meal, you could do it in a small, convenient radius.

      But what would become of these shops once Sainsbury’s had opened its titan store? With a gross trading floorspace of 30,000 square feet, and eight franchise shops below, it would have more than double the sales space of all the existing shops in Pimlico. It would also be five times larger than the existing Tesco round the corner. Local residents suggested to Sainsbury’s that it cut back the size of its proposed store while retaining the same proposed number of product lines. Sainsbury’s was already well represented in the area, they pointed out. There was, and still is, a vast, fully comprehensive Sainsbury’s at Nine Elms only 1½ miles south and a smaller Sainsbury’s in Victoria Street, ten minutes’ walk away. Why, local residents wondered, did Sainsbury’s need another huge store?

      Supported by local objections, Westminster Council refused Sainsbury’s planning permission in 1996 and then again in 1997, when it submitted a second proposal with the number of flats reduced from 178 to 160. Sainsbury’s appealed against these decisions and the matter went to a local inquiry. There then ensued a David and Goliath struggle.

      Not content simply to rely on Westminster Council to oppose the proposal, the local community got itself organised with an experienced planning consultant to put its case. It tempered well-reasoned, carefully assembled, knowledgeable planning arguments with the genuine, heartfelt concerns of local people. Through Pimlico FREDA, the local traders of Pimlico appealed to the inspector in charge of hearing the appeal. They represented all the little shops who worked hard and stayed up late to service the community: Buckles and Brogues, Gastronomia Italia, Park Lane Cleaners, Stanwells Homecare Centre, Sea Harvest Fisheries, Market News – the list went on. Their case had a common-sense logic to it. ‘We believe that our area is unique in central London with its local market and small businesses. Many of these facilities would be unable

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