4th December 2005

The Gloucester Chamber of Trade and Commerce is right that the £200 million Gloucester Quays development will mean a loss of trade for city centre retailers, the closure of stores and further retail decline (Citizen 28/11/05). The decision to hold a public inquiry is the right one.

Gloucester needs regenerating. However these proposals for a huge "Out of Center" retail outlet and new supermarket is likely to lead to a widespread collapse of the fragile City centre economy. Encouraging more out-of-town shopping is not the way to regenerate our city. The development will not bring in visitors to the town centre and if anything will take trade away from the centre; goods on sale at the new site will duplicate and undercut prices in the city.

The new roads will also serve the Quays, inhibit pedestrian movements and will likely lead to better access to shopping centres like Cribbs Causeway.

Wilton Shopping, near Salisbury is quoted as an example of a similar scheme that has proved successful. However Salisbury was in a very different situation to Gloucester now and Wilton town's economy is in a decline which is blamed directly on the new Shopping Village (i).

A very different picture from that referred to for Salisbury can be found across the nation from Aberystwyth to Canterbury, Dorchester or Dudley. all have in common that their local economies were sent into huge decline by the opening of an out of town shopping centre. The number of unused shops in Gloucester is already too high, and too many of our historic buildings falling into disrepair. We must be especially careful to avoid the fate of so many town centres, and end up with even more shops closed and historic buildings being vandalised by neglect..

We urge all to look again at how we can regenerate our city, and protect our heritage. I hope the Citizen with it's 'Buy Local' campaign will join the Green Party to be at the forefront of this.

Bryan Meloy (pictured above in Gloucester High Street)
Gloucester Green Party
0845 456 2602

Notes:

(i) See Wilton Community Plan:
http://66.102.9.104/u/ wiltshire?q=cache:5Prhol9pL54J:www.wiltshire.gov.uk/wilton-community- plan.pdf+wilton&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Decline of Wilton economy:
http://66.102.9.104/u/ wiltshire?q=cache:65X8PHtOkhYJ:www.wiltshire.gov.uk/transport-local- plan-transport-programmes.pdf+Wilton+shopping+village&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

(ii) http://www.greenaudit.org/local%20shopping.htm
*Is there a Future for Local Shops?*

'In his analysis of the scope for expanding and strengthening local communities Richard Douthwaite (1996) presents a bleak picture of the situation facing local shops: "Local shops have a crucial role to play if a district is to achieve greater economic self-reliance, and it is unlikely that they will be able to do so unless they are locally owned. This is because the big chainstores do their buying centrally and will not be prepared to stock very different sets of supplies in each of their outlets. As a result the preservation—and in Britain, where so many villages have lost their shops, the re-creation—of locally owned retail businesses has to be given high priority. The city of Canterbury does not have a single sizeable shop that is locally owned, while Dorchester, Thomas Hardy's archetypical market town, retains only two."