THE TOWN THAT SAID NO TO TESCO

Eight years ago, the Suffolk town of Saxmundham said no to a giant new Tesco. Today, local shops and suppliers are thriving, and campaigners are claiming a victory for individuality and the quality of life.

In Saxmundham town centre, shoppers move sedately between stationers HG Crisp and ironmongers W Wells & Son. Crisp is a newcomer, established in 1834; Wells dates from the 18th century. “Steady,” is how more than one local describes this market town in east Suffolk. This week, however, this quiet place, 22 miles up the A12 from Ipswich, had a rare taste of fame: it was hailed as a beacon of resistance in the fight against clone communities, monstrous out-of-town superstores and the slow strangling of small business.

Saxmundham has not only said no to a proposed out-of-town Tesco, but has thrived since doing so. According to a new report from the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), the network of local traders and small suppliers in the town and surrounding area has flourished since proposals for a superstore were blocked in 1998. This, they said, shows that consumers and communities do have a choice – there is an alternative to Tescopoly. Local shops can survive. Consumers can buy local food as part of a more sustainable food chain.

And yet the story of how one small town stemmed the supermarket tide has unlikely heroes and a feudal flavour. And a visit to the town reveals that a final victory, if it could be called that, is far from won.

Saxmundham was a manor of 80 sheep, 30 pigs and three slaves held by Algar, a thane of Edward the Confessor, when it was first recorded in the Domesday era. It prospered on its fertile, arable lands until its Georgian grandeur gradually faded with farming`s decline. In 1977, its weekly livestock market ceased. Two grocers disappeared, replaced by a modest, town-centre Somerfield. “It was a ghost town about a decade ago,” says one local. Then Tesco popped up in 1997, proposing a grand superstore beside the bypass just out of town.

Lady Caroline Cranbrook, now 70, was anticipating a quiet retirement after farming and bringing up children in nearby Great Glemham. Instead, she became an activist. Familiar with the closure of shops where she grew up in Lincolnshire, she was “amazed to find all the towns still had the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker” when she moved to farm in east Suffolk. With Tesco, she feared it could all disappear. The supermarket`s own retail impact survey – which it submitted as part of the planning process – showed the proposed catchment area. It covered 81 shops in six market towns and 19 villages around Saxmundham and Cranbrook visited every one: just two welcomed the proposed supermarket; 12 hoped they would survive; 67 believed its arrival would force them to shut.

The local traders, who employed more than 500 people and, crucially, sourced supplies from more than 200 local producers, did not roll over. Richard Crisp of HG Crisp, whose grandfather acquired the shop in 1868, led the fight against the superstore. “On the whole, people were very much against having Tesco,” he says, crediting the success of the campaign to the work of the district council and behind-the-scenes campaigning by the local MP, the conservation-minded Tory veteran John Gummer.

While local people praise Cranbrook for her staunch opposition, Suffolk Coastal district council also gives credit to Gummer. According to Ivan Jowers, chairman of the development control committee, Tesco failed to prove its case under the rules introduced by Gummer when he was environment secretary in 1996. “This required developers to prove that they had exhausted all town centre and other options before being able to justify an out-of-town development,” he says. “We thought that there was some demand for additional retail in the town, but not outside of it, as was being proposed. As well as the potential impact on existing town centre traders, we were concerned about its sustainability and the impact of additional car journeys.”

Refused permission by the council, Tesco then quietly withdrew its appeal, much to the townspeople`s surprise. Eight years on, campaigners are not triumphant. They still fear that supermarkets will seek to return at some point. But Cranbrook and the CPRE argue that Saxmundham`s experience shows the value of communities staying supermarket-free. “It is not just the individual shops; it is what they are supporting,” she says. “It is about a food web.” Since Tesco was turned away, the number of small farmers and specialist food producers in east Suffolk has risen from 300 in 1998 to 370 today.

Friday Street farm shop stands on the Aldeburgh road. Set up by Pauline and Roger Blyth on their farm, this sprawling independent supermarket, with its teashop and its maize maze, stocks produce from 80-100 local suppliers, ranging from organic beef to premium chutney in clay pots handpainted by a local artist. The choice is impressive: you can buy local eggs, quail eggs or duck eggs, and local ice-cream from three different farms. A couple of months ago, the Blyths were approached by a local chef hoping to sell home-made pesto. “He believed in his produce and we could offer somewhere to sell it,” says Kate Prentice, the manager. The chef now sells half of all his pesto through the shop and has branched out into hummus.

“Virtually all food businesses start on a small scale,” says Cranbrook. “Unless you have outlets, you can`t do it – you can`t learn if you have a good product or not. I realised these local shops were key and the whole thing was interlinked. Once you start losing your shops, you start losing your local services – the solicitors and the banks and the electricians. When a big chain comes in, it breaks up – they have a long supply chain and their own contractors.”

Surveying the catchment area again in 2004, she found exactly the same number of shops. Although 14 of the 81 businesses had closed, another 14 had opened (bucking the national trend that sees 2,000 small shops close each year). She also found an increasing number of young people shopping locally and consumers much more concerned about where their food came from. “Since then even more have opened and it is a very buoyant scene. We are on the verge of becoming a food destination but it is very fragile.”

A “far-sighted” district council with a food policy was the key to Tesco`s rejection, Cranbrook believes, because it enabled the council to clearly show there was no need for a new supermarket. “If more district councils had that sort of policy, they would be in a better position to fight the supermarkets. What is desperately needed is a planning landscape that takes into account retail need.” At the council, Jowers says they try their best and are developing a new local framework that, they hope, will “include policies to help local food producers”. But the council is wary of being seen as heroes: they angered many recently when they reluctantly allowed the expansion of the Tesco at Martlesham Heath, a 25-minute drive from Saxmundham.

During his 40 years at the newsagents, Crisp has seen many businesses come and go. “Saxmundham is a steady little town,” he says. “It doesn`t have ups and it doesn`t have downs, but it would have suffered if it had the out-of-town Tesco.” Since the supermarket`s defeat, however, he has seen customers become increasingly conscious of the importance of local shops. “There`s a definite awareness because life has got so difficult for so many towns. People want to support us. There are people I know who could drive to Tesco in Ipswich and buy a book a lot cheaper than we sell it, but they would rather come here and buy it at the full price.”

Tina Hennessey and her daughter, Jess, opened Cherries, a small fruit and veg shop in the town`s marketplace, last month. “If Tesco had been here we wouldn`t have opened,” says Mrs Hennessey. “There wouldn`t have been any point.” Their produce is about 50% local, 50% national. Before the asparagus season finished last week, they bought it from a farmer three minutes up the road who would pick it every morning for them. It went from ground to shop in half an hour.

Pam Garratt, getting her passport photo taken in HG Crisp, reckons Saxmundham is bucking another national trend. In the past six months in her street, she says, three second homes have been turned into permanent ones. This trade-depressing presence of second homes in north Norfolk was what encouraged Bob Foyers and his partner Karen Aldridge to move south to Saxmundham just over a year ago and set up The Bistro at the Deli. While plenty of weekenders visit nearby Aldeburgh, they saw an opening in the town, particularly when they noticed it had two banks. “If there are two banks, there has got to be a business community and we saw there were independent shops, a nice butcher, a nice baker,” says Foyers.

Business is brisk, the takings swollen by local employees (from the banks for instance) grabbing a quick panini for lunch. What would happen if a big supermarket was built? “It would kill us,” he says. “Our business thrives on people being in the street. Without people in the street – and you only get them with independent shops – we wouldn`t have moved here.” In Saxmundham`s web, small ventures support each other. Foyers will always go to one of the two traditional ironmongers in town when he needs a new lightbulb. “Money goes around and you`ve got to spend it locally,” he says. According to the CPRE report, more than 90% of money spent in major supermarkets leaves their local area.

So Saxmundham is a thriving town that fought Tesco and won? “Load of hogwash,” says John “Jacko” Jackson, the founder of Jackson`s Bakery. “There`s a lot of people saying we`re fighting against the supermarkets and we`re winning, but at the end of the day, we`re not. The supermarkets in the area are draining everything. It`s all very well for people to say there are farm shops springing up, but they are missing the point. In Saxmundham there is only one place left where you can do your grocery shopping and that`s a supermarket. We`re the only bakers left. There used to be four.”

Plenty of people are willing to gripe about the grip of the big four supermarkets but still shop there. Saxmundham`s Somerfield is relatively small and central, but it, too, takes plenty of business. “I hate this place,” says Tessa Newton, loading her Somerfield carrier bags into the back of her Land Rover. “I do go to the local farmers` market and there`s a very good little vegetable shop at Knodishall.” Yet sometimes, she admits, there`s no alternative to the supermarket, especially if you don`t have the time or means to scurry around farm shops.

Supporters of Tesco point out that well-heeled east Suffolk can afford not to have cheap supermarket food, especially campaigners such as Cranbrook, with her 850 acres of land. “If there`s competition, it`s always better for the consumer,” agrees Ron Strowger, shopping at Somerfield. He would like more supermarkets – “The more, the merrier, as long as they comply with the local planning regulations” – and believes there will always be room for the “old boy” at the roadside selling tomatoes from his allotment. At the moment, at least, Tesco appears content to lie low in the area. “Supermarkets are a lifeline for many people who value the convenience, choice and low prices available and many people will drive out of town if there isn`t a supermarket locally,” says a spokesperson. “But we have always said that customers will also support local retailers who do a good job and Saxmundham seems to prove that point,” he adds tactfully.

The CPRE hopes the example of Saxmundham will encourage the Competition Commission to stem the spread of supermarkets into the catchment areas of small convenience stores, and persuade local authorities to put stronger planning policies in place to protect local businesses. The council “were right to say `no` to Tesco,” reckons Jackson. “If they had said `yes` Saxmundham would have been a desert, but unfortunately the damage has been done. It was done when we got the first supermarket here – Gateway [now Somerfield] – years ago. It`s like planting a big tree in a small garden. That tree sucks everything up.”

It`s 30 years since Jackson quit his job at Sizewell nuclear power station to bake bread. Two of his sons now run the business, and they have had to scale down. “The wholesale part of our business is gone because there are no little shops,” he says. And pushing supermarkets to stock local produce will not work, he argues. “If we were asked to supply a supermarket I`d say `on your bike` because they want such a ridiculous discount it wouldn`t be worth doing it. I might as well leave the flour in the bags.”

Still, Saxmundham offers hope and even its most pessimistic traders insist they have not abandoned it. “We`re still fighting. We`re still in,” says Jackson. “We believe that full circle will come around and all these supermarkets will eat each other and die of indigestion”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/jun/28/communities.foodanddrink