Blog: Tesco UK chief Chris Bush on the grocer's approach to the changing high street

When Tesco announces it wants to open a store in a town, some assume it’s a foregone conclusion that the store will be built eventually. In reality it is only ever the start of a process of planning and consultation.

Today I have announced that Tesco has decided not to pursue a plan to redevelop a hotel site in Sherborne into a store. We’ve held meetings in the town, talked to supporters and opponents, discussed with the Council and this week we have concluded it won’t work.

Protestors will celebrate, but in the end it was planning, not the protest, which drove this conclusion. Road access to the store site proved too difficult and expensive to resolve, the plan was not workable, so we did not submit an application.

While the Sherborne protest was not the deciding factor, we did listen to it. When we say we consult communities, we mean it. We do it because successful stores serve their communities well and to do that, we need to understand the community well. The consensus is usually more balanced than it might appear.

In Sheringham for example a referendum in the town showed a majority in favour of a supermarket in spite of one of the most active, widely-reported protests against a store. In Marlborough, a market town like Sherborne, campaigners fought vigorously for a Tesco in the town.

In trying to understand the needs of a community, we listen to all views, not just the most active or vocal participants. Protests, often passionate and colourful, make better news than consensus but they are never the whole story.

Some of the people who rely on local supermarkets the most – the elderly, those on fixed incomes or tight budgets – are those who are heard the least. A supermarket also employs local people and I cannot overstate how much difference a job makes to the people who get one.

Communities are not static, they evolve. As Robert Peston’s programme on the history of shopping in Britain showed earlier this week, as shoppers we are very different today than we were five, ten, or fifty years ago. Just as the motor car or the abolition of retail price maintenance revolutionised retail in the past, the internet and the smartphone are today transforming how we shop and access services like banking.

Activities that would once have brought us onto a local high street to the most convenient local branch can now be completed anywhere, at any time.

Supermarkets have become a convenient scapegoat for changing high streets but the reality is far more complex. The real question driving this debate is this; how do you explain why some high streets untouched by supermarkets fail while others thrive with a mix of large and small retailers trading successfully side-by-side?

In high streets where we have built small stores, Southampton University researchers have found the convenience they provide attracts customers back to the town centre.

What we need is a thorough analysis of the challenges facing town centres, one which examines the impacts of rent and rates, car parking costs and capacity, street layout, transport, financial pressures, business credit, the internet, demographic change, changing lifestyles, consumer trends, and the location of public amenities like leisure centres and council offices.

Finding solutions to these challenges isn’t easy, and it’s inevitable that not everyone will take the same view. We stand ready to work with anyone - whatever their perspective - who shares our commitment to the high street.

We need dedication, energy and above all cooperation. It can be tempting simply to blame someone or something for the problems of town centres but our energies would be better used working together to craft workable, innovative answers to the complex issues our communities face.

Chris Bush, Tesco UK managing director

Taken from Tesco’s Talking Shop