Supermarkets creating a 'Ghost Town Britain'

Feb 7 2003 By Nicholas Craig, The Journal

It looks as though Britain is going to be ruled by four giant supermarket chains raking in £70bn each year.

The Safeway takeover will not only squeeze the choice of food retailers, but ultimately squeeze our farmers hard.

The buying power of the big supermarkets is terrifying. The big five - Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury, Safeway and Morrison's - control chunks of the markets overseas as well as in Britain. When they demand a price cut, farmers suffer.

The Soil Association describes this as a fear chain, with rival farmers using cheap, and sometimes illegal foreign labour, to undercut others.

The food industry is now our largest manufacturing sector. The big five's success has helped to cut the range of greengrocers, butchers, flower shops and bakeries on the high street, which have been important outlets for farmers.

We are so pampered by the certainty of exotic delicatessen goods alongside our daily needs in the supermarket, that we think twice about a journey to the local mini-market where we could be confronted by three dried up carrots and one type of cheese. I live in Corbridge, which remains popular with residents for shopping.

Its charm helps to attract commuters like me to wander round it at the weekend, where the change of pace, quality of produce and range of shops makes it a far more civilised way to spend a couple of hours than in a supermarket.

However, ex-mining villages and more rural locations struggle to keep their customers turning up to the few remaining shops.

Ashington's main street, Station Road, was apparently the inspiration for John Hall's MetroCentre, with its long, straight line of bustling shops, all full to bursting at the weekends in the 1950s and 1960s. Now that street is peppered with far more charity shops than food or department stores, and far fewer people.

If the march of the supermarkets is not stopped `Ghost Town Britain' will be the result, warn the consumer experts.

It's easy enough to halt the trend. Nip out and buy your bread, fruit, newspaper and meat in your local shops. It will benefit the shop owners, the community, the farmers and, because we're getting a bit of exercise, ourselves!

* Nicholas Craig is a partner at Watson Burton law firm.