Sainsbury’s put in their supermarket bid

By Gerald Isaaman

Sainsbury’s is putting in its plans today (Friday) for a new supermarket in Marlborough and believes it is going to win the battle with Tesco to bring competition to the market town.

It is on the verge too of buying the old council depot site, on the Salisbury Road, from Wiltshire Council for a new 15,000 square foot basically food supermarket despite Tesco’s application going before the council’s planning committee on March 18.

Now it is expected that the council will delay making that decision until it has been able to assess the Sainsbury’s bid, but there is concern that the council cannot be the impartial decider of the competing schemes if it has a direct financial interest in one of them.

“There will be only one new supermarket,” Tony Cook, Sainsbury’s land agent, told a meeting of 20 members of Marlborough Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday night. “We are confident we will win.

“Our application is going in on Friday this week and we seek a planning determination within 13 weeks. Our bid for the depot site has been accepted as the best and we expect to exchange contracts within days.”

But serious concerns remain about the effect of a new supermarket with 172 parking spaces outside Marlborough’s main High Street shopping centre, one trader warning the meeting that there was abundant evidence that trade could reduce by 30 to 50 per cent as a result of the new out-of-town supermarket.

 “Marlborough High Street will change dramatically in the next five years,” said jewellery David Dudley. “Individual shops, which is what Marlborough is all about, will go and we could end up with unemployment in the town.”

Another protest came from Chris Brown, managing director of Microlights, the pioneering Marlborough lighting company, which is seeking a new site in which to expand its business, which employs 80 people and exports 65 per of its products.

He complained that the Tesco scheme was using “employment land” and that Wiltshire Council had changed the designation of the council depot in order to profit from other unexpected uses.

“What it is is a neat deal,” he said. “What is going on in the planning process is a disgrace.”

But it was suggested that if the Tesco bid fails then Microlights could legitimately take over their site on the Marlborough business park.

Mr Cook insisted that the Sainsbury’s proposal was the better of the two, the more so as it was slightly nearer the town centre and on a three-metre higher site than the Tesco application.

The supermarket had been seeking a site in Marlborough for some time but had been unable to find any acceptable site in or close to the High Street.

“This is far from the Sainsbury’s ideal,” he added. “It is basically a question of size. We have not found one that is realistically acceptable.”