At a time when our struggling town centres need all the help they can get, expanding out-of-town supermarkets would risk turning a downturn into a death-knell (Revealed: how supermarkets plan to build thousands more stores mostly out of town, 22 December).
The serious damage that out-of-town retail does has been recognised since the 1990s (most recently in Mary Portas's intelligent report on the future of our high streets), and the restrictions imposed by Conservative and Labour governments have done a lot to promote urban renaissance. Soulless out-of-town sheds destroy the countryside, blight our cities, and contribute to climate change. They eat up greenfield sites on the edge of conurbations and encourage car journeys, thereby marginalising people without cars, and increasing both local pollution and global carbon emissions. They also undermine urban vitality, stripping towns of the shops that bring people and life into their centres. We only need to look over the Atlantic to see how many North American cities have been hollowed out, with people following retail to colossal malls on freeways, leaving city centres derelict and desolate.
As Portas observed, many of our high streets are already on the critical list. Letting supermarkets develop on greenfield sites would pull the plug on these, and send others into a downwards spiral.
Richard Rogers
London
• It was depressing to read of the proposed expansion of supermarkets and the inevitable impact they will have on reducing choice and local retail provision in our high streets and small towns. Action on some of the 28 recommendations made in the recent Mary Portas's report on the future of high streets, including proposed high street champions and tighter control on out-of-town centres, could help ensure that supermarkets continue to play an important but less predatory role in retail provision.
However, after four Competition Commission reports into supermarkets and the potential weakening of the protection for town centres in the draft national planning policy framework, positive government action to reign in supermarkets seems unlikely. Perhaps it is time to turn to direct action.
Your report says that supermarkets account for more than 97% of grocery sales. If we could have a national campaign to persuade households not to spend more than 75% of their grocery budget in supermarkets that would do more to support local retailers than any government action.
Ian Haywood
London
• As a society, we use legislation to protect certain things we hold dear, including listed buildings, areas of natural beauty and great crested newts. Without legislation, the great free market would probably trample all over them. If we, as a society, value our high streets in the way that they used to exist, then we need to legislate to prevent the great free market from trampling all over them too. A starting point would be to stop development of out-of-town shopping complexes. Advocates of the great free market will list the benefits of large retailers – choice, price, convenience, free parking etc. Of course, they are absolutely right, but if we are not prepared to sacrifice these things in order to preserve our high streets – and I suspect we're not – then we should stop complaining and let the big retailers get on with it. We can't have it both ways.
Graham Hines
Woodbridge, Suffolk
• The vast expansion in out-of-town supermarket developments foreshadowed in your report disguises a further aspect in the development of these sites.
The out-of-town business model operates around the car boot, and supermarkets often measure their business success by the number and turnover of cars. It is precisely these demands which impact locally on traffic congestion, causing costs in localities including pollution and ill-health. In line with the principle that the "polluter shall pay", it seems entirely reasonable that this cost burden should fall on the out-of-town developments rather than on business ratepayers, who, ironically, include a far greater proportion of high street traders because of their frontage.
A supermarket development officer recently commented to my colleague that his middle-sized store would generate £500 each a day from the 300 parking places. If just 20% of this £15,000 per day was returned to the community by means of a "tarmac tax", then £1m per annum per supermarket could be invested locally in sustainable developments, opening up high streets to pedestrian browsers and shoppers.
Dr Jim Ford
Southport, Lancashire