Focus on Huddersfield supermarket wars from owner of the first in town

May 13 2009 By Andrew Jackson

GIANT Asda plans a £40m store for Chapel Hill near Huddersfield town centre – the site of Thomas Broadbent engineers.

Rivals Tesco are pushing for a megastore off Southgate on the site of the Sports Centre to replace their outdated Viaduct Street store.

Every such plan stirs a hornets’ nest. MP Barry Sheerman is heading opposition to both Tesco and Asda proposals.

And that has always been the case looking back at Huddersfield’s supermarket history.

Every supermarket – from Lodge’s giant store in Birkby in 1975 to Hillards in Viaduct Street in 1978, Asda at Brackenhall and Morrisons at Waterloo – has attracted furious opposition from nearby residents and local traders.

And practically every one has beaten that opposition into the ground. The march of the supermarkets seems inexorable.

Edward Lodge is the former chairman of Lodge’s Supermarkets and now worries about the growth of the superstore phenomenon.

"Town shops like the ones inside Huddersfield ring road are the social and commercial heart of a town," he said.

"If your policy is to benefit the superstores on the outskirts, that is to the detriment of the town centre shops and traders.

"I don’t blame the supermarkets for doing this and I can’t blame people for shopping in places where there is unlimited free parking.

"But when Asda claims it will create 400 jobs at its new Chapel Hill store we should be aware that this probably means the loss of 600 jobs from small specialist shops elsewhere in town. You’ll end up with a ghost town.’’

He added: "Supermarkets started by taking the bulk of grocery trade from small town grocers. Now, they sell hardware, clothes, garden furniture, greetings cards, newspapers, petrol, flowers. They took the loaf and now they’re sweeping up the crumbs."

These fears are backed by research and publishing group Corporate Watch repeatedly gives substance to the fears most people share on monopolies.

"The ‘cheap food’ that the supermarkets peddle also comes at a very high price to taxpayers, small manufacturers, small farmers and the environment," said a spokesman.

" We deserve affordable food, yes, but also healthy food, healthy communities, healthy small businesses and a healthy countryside.

"Despite ‘locally-produced food’ being the latest supermarket buzzwords, finding local food in supermarkets is unusual. Even if it is labelled ‘local’ it still likely to have travelled the length and breadth of the country before reaching the nearest supermarket to the place where it was produced.

"This is because supermarkets are designed with centralised distribution in mind and stores simply do not have the infrastructure to purchase and sell locally. Industrially produced food covers an excessive number of miles before it reaches the shelves."