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