Thanks for all your letters - we hope to send the packs out very soon!

Powys planners have received a stunning 685 letters opposing the Tesco plan and just five for it! (The Co-op plan has received one for it and none against.)

The population of Machynlleth is just over 2000 including children. Some
letters will probably have come from outside Machynlleth, but even so, perhaps over 1 in 4 adults were bothered enough about the development to write to the council.

Thanks a million to all who did. This is a unprecedented response!

The Council has therefore called in an independent retail impact assessor to produce a report to see how much new superstore space a town of this size can really take. A transport impact report is also in the pipeline.

But the campaign continues. We must get the facts out there to counter the lies and misinformation that have been circulating and fuelling division of our community. It’s very important to talk to people and explain. We will be producing a factsheet.

One assessment we have done is to look at the figures Tesco normally gets from selling goods. We worked out that if, as Tesco say, their shoppers would only come from Machynlleth, we would each have to spend over £15000 a year. Clearly they are expecting traffic from far away, in contrast to their claims.

Please also keep sending your letters of opposition.

Tuesday 6.30 upstairs White Lion
Dydd Mawrth 6.30 Llew Gwyn , ar y llofft

A town councillor is quoted in the Shropshire Star today, saying “A lot of people have told me that we as a town just couldn’t afford not to have these 140 jobs come to Machynlleth. And I feel we will need a very good reason on why we should refuse this application.”

Here is the reason.

Tesco claim in their application that the jobs are “additional”. They don’t define what this means, but it appears to be one of several instances where their application is either inaccurate or deliberately ambiguous.

Reading it in full, it becomes clear that the figure is the total number of people they employ, without any subtraction for the jobs lost in other shops or other sectors locally.

This is critically important, because the superstores’ own research shows a major NET LOSS of employment whenever a large new store opens.

In its exhaustive report on the issue, the National Retail Planning Forum, which was financed by Tesco, Sainsbury, Marks and Spencer, Boots and John Lewis, showed that every large outlet causes the net LOSS of 276 jobs. That’s hardly surprising: work by the New Economics Foundation shows that independent shops employ five times as many people per unit of turnover.

In other words, if this Tesco opens, it will create jobs, but it will also destroy jobs. The research suggests that it will destroy far more jobs than it creates, as small shops either close or downsize as a result of the loss of trade. This alone gives the county council a very good reason for refusing the application.

The Tesco application is a development which would cause a major loss of jobs in the Dyfi Valley.

Oner other thing, in addition to the post earlier today also on retail impact. It’s not just the obvious shops that will be under threat, the ones that sell goods which Tesco will sell, from the bakers to Dovey Electrical. Many of the others rely on passing trade, drawn by those who shop in the other shops. These too will be vulnerable.

More criticism of Tesco is here (unsurprisingly it’s ‘neutrality’ is ‘disputed’ - by whom? - but the article is well attributed at the end): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesco

Please make your views known, to:

planning.services@powys.gov.uk, mach.council@plasmachynlleth.co.uk, mel.biffin@plasmachynlleth.co.uk, rayq@ceredigion.gov.uk, cllr.joy.shearer@powys.gov.uk, eurfyle@ceredigion.gov.uk, cllr.geraint.hopkins@powys.gov.uk, steve.burgess@powys.gov.uk, hpw@ceredigion.gov.uk, simon.shouler@wales.gsi.gov.uk, mike.steward@powys.gov.uk, news@countytimes.co.uk,

In its retail impact assessment, Tesco is severely under-estimating the turnover of its store, concealing its true impact. Tesco quotes their average sales density for convenience sales at £12,538 per square metre (as used in the Holmfirth application). Page 6 of the retail impact assessment quotes 1306 sq metres net convenience floorspace.

1,306 square metres of convenience floorspace therefore = £16,374,628 of sales.

Why are Tesco quoting a ‘benchmark’ turnover of £11,552 and in table 5 of the draft capacity assessment using convenience floorspace of 1095 square metres giving a convenience turnover of only £12,649,440?

They have deliberately hidden 23% of their convenience impact.

Why would they do this? To hide the real impact of the store on other shops and traffic. This is why their traffic assessment makes it seem that with the store opening there will be LESS traffic coming from over the Dyfi bridge not more (see the 2010 projections). Yet our independent survey of desired journeys should Tesco open, conducted in Tywn and Dolgellau, and submitted by Ecodyfi, showed that of course a significant number of car journeys will result.

Tesco knows this - it is why they have chosen to apply for such a large store. But they are trying to make us think its impact will be less than it will.

Even using Tesco’s modest assumption that it will take £2.01 million from the £6.13 Machynlleth Co-op million turnover, enough to close it anyway, the true turnover figures, using the same proportions would increase diversion to 42% of the CO-OP turnover. The Co-op will definitely close, not to mention many smaller stores, whose operating margins are tiny - they only need to lose 10% of turnover to fold.

Do you want to live in a town with a ghost high street? Tesco brings jobs? Don’t make us laugh.

Write your letters of objection today!

We warned against attempts to use the Tesco application to divide the community. This is not wisdom or good leadership/stewardship.

Divided amongst ourselves we are open to the worst of all outcomes: a planning application that is not properly examined, that wrecks the town.

It is about the issues, not who says what. We’re all in this together.

We want the best of outcomes: moving forward, preserving the best of Machynlleth and trying to give people what they say they want: choice and good value.

It’s not even about Tesco. If people want a Tesco, they can have one.

BUT not such a large supermaket in that particular location.

We suspect the mailing list we’ve been using may have been compromised. Because the person who set it up has disappeared with the password (anyone know Jasper Krater?), we’ve had to set up a new one. Please join, even if you’re on the old one. We’ll gradually stop using that one.

Any message sent to this mailing list goes to everyone else - a great way to keep in touch with the latest developments.

To join, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CadwchMachynArbennig/ and click ‘join this group’. You’ll have to get a Yahoo ID if you don’t already - easy to do. No spam will result!

Ydych chi’n hapus i wario amser yn curo ar ddrysau pobl i’w hannog i sgwennu llythyrau? Rydym angen siaradwyr Cymraeg! Cysylltwch efo Angharad ar 07780 914369. Diolch yn fawr.

An idea emerged from last Thursday’s meeting that we hope you can help with.

We had a fantastic response to the letter writing campaign a few weeks ago - with 240 letters delivered in person to the Planning Office, and many more emailed and posted.

The next stage in the process is the Planning committee.

We now want to present each member of the Powys Planning Committee, plus each Mach Town Councillor and each local County Councillor, with an Mach Tesco Information Pack, outlining the detailed argument against this planning application.

A vital part of this is to be 100 personally written letters from Machynlleth (and environs) residents.

This is a chance for you to get your thoughts onto the reading list of every key player in this process.

We photocopied many of the letters that were delivered to the planning officer - however most of the personally written letters were in sealed envelopes - and the decision was taken not to open and photocopy them.

So, please please please let your voice be heard by everyone who matters.

The deadline needs to be Monday 17th (next Monday)

It seems the Town Councillors weren’t allowed to hear the letters against the application in the meeting. They, and all the other decision makers, need to know the strength of feeling against the massive Supermarket development - please print your letter out again, or write a new one, and you will be helping hugely.

Please make sure your address and signature are on the letter - and that it is not a standard letter, but one that reflects your own feelings and issues with this application.

We will make sure that it gets read by the right people.

Before Monday PLEASE!!!

Successful meeting with Lembit Opik yesterday. He will be sending thank you messages to everyone who wrote to the planning officer at his expense. The messages will explain the current stage of things.

Our campaign is now in a national newspaper: The Guardian.

We established that it is still very important that people continue to write letters. You can just send the same letter you said before or download one from the sample letters link, change it as you see fit, and send it to the Powys councillors in Welshpool, named on the how to object link; and to the individual members of the Mach town council (listed at the bottom of this page), whom we don’t believe have been given the opportunity to read the 18 letters of objection (0 against) sent to the council. These were not read out by the Clerk at the council meeting!

There are lots of things to do, and if anybody would like to contact me I will give them a choice of tasks!

Some people are also going to go around doing more doorstepping and talking about the issues on parts of the town that have not yet been visited. If you wish to do this also get in touch.