TESCO DEMANDS LONGER DELIVERY HOURS

Tesco Stores Ltd has applied for non-compliance with Condition 1 of its current planning permission (Ref. 09/00039/FUL) to extend delivery and collection hours at its Broughton Road store (Ref. 14/01866/FUL).

The hours are currently from 7.30am–8pm (Mon.–Sat.), and from 12pm–6pm (Sun.). The extended hours would be from 7am–9pm (Mon.–Sat.) and from 9am–6pm (Sun.).

In other words, an extra 12 hours per week.

Neighbouring residents – who already experience the peep-peep of reversing vehicles, the fumes of diesel engines, the crash and rattle of cages, and the looming presence of huge lorries throbbing outside their homes as they wait to enter the service area – are concerned (see Issue 197).

According to its ‘Design Statement’, Tesco currently makes 3 deliveries a day, 2 of them comprising fresh goods, with additional deliveries of fresh goods from suppliers.

It takes about 1 hour to unload a full lorry (45 cages) and 2 hours to get that produce onto the shelves, meaning that ‘the store manager often experiences problems in meeting the customer demand for fresh goods’.

Tesco proposes more deliveries, not more goods entering the store. However, because deliveries will be able to be made at times when there is less traffic about, they will, supposedly:

reduce congestion on the local road network and lower fuel consumption. It also enables efficient distribution planning. For example a full HGV can serve several stores rather than having part filled HGVs serving individual stores. This reduces distribution road miles and operational costs.

The change in hours would, claims Tesco, reduce the amount of time lorries wait for admission to the service area, and also allow for more efficient use of staff resources.

‘Ultimately, therefore, the ability to have extended deliver hours guarantees product availability and impacts on store profitability.’

In a simpler, quieter time when the store opened in 1983 (Ref. 795/83), opening hours were restricted to 8am–8pm, Monday to Saturday, with matching delivery hours. Delivery and opening hours have crept up since, with the most recent extension coming in April 2009.

To no-one’s great surprise, an environmental noise assessment undertaken by Sharps Redmore for Tesco finds that deliveries and collections between 7am and 9pm (Mon.–Sat.) and 9am and 6pm (Sun.) ‘would be most acceptable, and would not have any materially detrimental effect on the living conditions of nearby residents’. Tesco cheerfully recommends that the Council impose a painless condition on permission, to the effect that Tesco should apply here its own pre-existing Service Yard Management Plan (SYMP).

It also helpfully appends the details of its recent successful Appeal to Scottish Ministers against conditions it didn’t like imposed by Glasgow City Council on a new superstore on Cathcart and Caledonia Roads (Ref. PPA-260-2030).

So where does all this leave the residents of Logie Green, Broughton and Boat Green Roads?

Some will understandably fear that they are on a slippery slope to 24-hour deliveries, fuelled by consumers who demand stacked shelves whenever they want them, and a supermarket chain fighting to retain market share against smaller, nimbler rivals. (An as yet unbuilt Lidl has already been granted an opening hours extension over the road. See Breaking news, 15.4.14.)

But has the manager of the Broughton Road Tesco really exhausted all other avenues to increase efficiency, stock availability and customer satisfaction? Perhaps by taking on more staff?

Tesco forcefully presents what looks like a strong case in its interpretation of National Planning Policy and the Edinburgh City Local Plan, but much will depend on how the effect on locals of more deliveries over a greater time-span is judged.

We find it hard to believe that any SYMP – however thoughtfully designed and rigorously applied – could adequately suppress this degree of additional disturbance for neighbours living in such very close proximity.

We note that when Tesco last applied to extend delivery and collection, its initial wish to operate within identical hours between 9am and 6pm on Sundays was assessed as 'excessive and detrimental to public amenity' in a Council report and had to be scaled back (Ref. 09/00039/FUL).

It seems to us a matter of common sense and natural justice that residents should not necessarily come second to the profit-drive of commercial giants. Ultimately, shops are there to serve us, not the other way around.

Councillor Nick Gardner (Labour, Ward 12) has contacted Spurtle to express his willingness to represent locals on this matter if a sufficient number feel strongly enough and get in touch. He has also alerted the New Town and Broughton Community Council. His contact and surgery time details are available here.

What do you think of Tesco's application? Are they responding responsibly to customers' wishes, or trampling over the living standards of comparatively powerless residents? Tell us what you think by email: spurtle@hotmail.co.uk  or Twitter: @theSpurtle  or Facebook: Broughton Spurtle