Malton's Future by Norman Maitland

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Future Malton’s

www.maltonsfuture.co.uk

Malton: home town or clone town? It’s your choice. Plans are being made right now by Ryedale District Council* that could change forever the way the market town of Malton looks and feels. If that sounds dramatic it’s meant to: once the plans are passed and the concrete for the superstores and the retail warehouses is poured that’ll be it.There’s no going

back – as other communities have discovered to their cost. So, before it’s too late, we think it’s worth asking: what are the things we value about this town of ours? And how do we make sure that they’re protected whilst letting the town change and grow in the way that it has down the years?

*Ryedale District Council are producing a Local Development Framework which will decide what kinds of development will take place in Malton in the next few years. Among their suggestions is the development of what is known as an ‘all categories’ superstore on Wentworth Street Car Park – that’s a superstore which sells everything but the kitchen sink – and sometimes even that.

What we love about Malton most is that it’s not just like everywhere else. Walk down the street in, say,York or Scarborough and it’s much the same as walking down the street anywhere else. Look at the shops and cafes and bars and you’ll see all the same names selling all the same old stuff that looks and feels and tastes exactly the same as the stuff in just about every other town. Slowly but surely many of our towns and cities have become clones of each other – but not Malton. Our buildings and shop fronts are different. The whole place still looks different: it looks and feels and sounds like Malton! Here we still have individual traders right in the middle of town making and selling things you can’t buy anywhere else. Many of them sell local produce from local farms and factories where local people have jobs. This means the money you spend in Malton tends to stay around Malton.

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Trouble is, if the planners start allowing the construction of superstores and retail warehouses on the edge of town the whole viability of the businesses in the town itself will be threatened. That’s when the rot sets in – as it has in countless similar towns throughout the UK in recent years. Specifically, the District Council want a superstore to be built on Wentworth Street Car Park. Not only will the Town lose its car park – the move would kill local businesses in the process.

Who’s behind this publication? And how do you make your voice heard? This publication comes from Malton Town Council, Malton and Norton Business in Action and the Fitzwilliam Malton Estate which owns property in the Town. These are our thoughts, but we urge everyone: Church groups and youth clubs, schools and individual businesses and, crucially, families in the town, to make their views known to their Ryedale District Councillor now, and when formal consultation on the Local Development Framework comes around. Ask the planners to explain why they want to kill off local businesses, or to challenge

any of the facts and figures we’ve mentioned here. Tell your friends, tell your neighbours, tell the person in the queue at the shop and the man sitting next to you in the café or pub. Above all, please tell your town and district councillor about your feelings for Malton. This is as much your community as ours or theirs – and it will be your children and grand children’s futures which will be affected by the planning policies eventually adopted by the District Council. Will Malton be a home town or a clone town in years to come? It’s up to you.

M&N

BiA

Have your say: VOTE NOW Visit www.maltonsfuture.co.uk to register your vote on the kind of future you would like to see for Malton’s town centre. Don’t forget to make your views known to your Councilor. Find their contact details on the Ryedale Council’s website, shown below.

http://democracy.ryedale.gov.uk/mgFindCouncillor.aspx

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Malton’s Future It isn’t just about buildings & businesses – Malton is a place for people. Malton is different because it’s built on a human scale. If that sounds high fallutin’ just think about this: you can walk across our town centre in just a few minutes. In that short journey you’ll find businesses and shops that can meet virtually all your needs whether you’re furnishing a home, buying a book or bread or a birthday card, starting a new business or hobby, planning a wedding or having a baby. If you call into the shops you’ll find that you’re served by people who know you – and know their products – and as you walk around town you’ll see and chat to people you know and they’ll see you. Most towns in the UK have lost this. Is this really what you want to lose in Malton?

Experience elsewhere shows that big shops kill little shops – so we had better decide what we want. The impact of the rising dominance of the big superstores may be hidden since there is often a time lag of two-to-three years before a big store opening and smaller stores being forced to close having used up their operating reserves in the battle with the big stores.

However long you’ve lived in Malton you might take all of this for granted or never even have noticed it before – but try it for yourself. Oh, and you can stop off for whatever kind of refreshments you want at several points along the way – and much of the produce on offer will be home-made from local ingredients! Try finding that in a superstore café!

A report by the Competition Commission found that the loss of local, independent shops can have serious impacts in terms of access to food, particularly for people on lower incomes or those who don’t have use of a car. We can’t say we haven’t been warned – but what on earth are Ryedale District Council planners thinking of ?

Isn’t the march of progress inevitable – and shouldn’t Malton move with the times? Change is not only inevitable we think it’s positively good as long as it isn’t just change for the sake of it. And anyway, Malton is changing all the time. It’s the kind of change we want you to think about. Do we want Malton to retain its unique character or to become a clone town like so many others? Do we want this to be a place for local businesses or just for big business? Do we keep the human scale or lose it forever?

The job creation myth Ten years ago, a research organisation called the National Retail Planning Forum – financed by Sainsbury’s,Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Boots and John Lewis – published a report on the superstores’ impact on employment. It found: • Strong evidence that new out-of-centre superstores have a negative net impact on retail employment up to 15 km away • the 93 stores the forum studied were responsible for the net loss of 25,685 employees • every time a large supermarket opened, 276 people lost their job • the New Economics Foundation has calculated that every £50,000 spent in small local shops creates one job.You need to spend £250,000 in superstores for the same result. © George Monbiot, first published in The Guardian

The planners will tell you that superstore development is all about creating jobs: but read this, from journalist George Monbiot who is himself fighting a superstore development in his home town of Machynlleth in mid-Wales – a small market town like ours.

The centre of Malton is still a cohesive commercial centre and the focus of our vibrant market town community. Building superstores and retail warehouses on the edge of town will drain business away from the centre. Independent businesses will find they cannot compete with the might of the superstores and, in time, will go to the wall. None of this is inevitable if we make our feelings known to the planners.

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Home town...

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Individual traders selling local produce to local people

...or clone town?

The same old faceless big brands selling the same old stuff

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Malton’s Future How real is the threat to the way we live now? Superstores claim that when they come to town they bring choice, cheap food, development and jobs. But as many communities know only too well, the reality is different. Superstores siphon money away from local communities and towards shareholders and more distant businesses. • A study by the new economics foundation found that £1 spent in a local shop selling local produce puts twice as much money back into the local economy as £1 spent in a superstore. • The jobs that superstores destroy are real jobs with real skills in real independent businesses. The jobs they ‘create’ are simply not the same.

Concrete and cars: a vision of out-of-town ugliness. Is this what the planners have in mind for Malton? Is it what you and your family want?

• Superstores increase traffic and congestion. The distribution systems used by superstores and the location of out of town stores generate large amounts of traffic. Recent work for the Department

for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) suggests that car use for shopping results in costs to society of more than £3.5 billion per year, from traffic emissions, noise, congestion and accidents. • Superstores generate waste and overpackaging. Packaging now makes up nearly a quarter of household waste, and 35-40% of household waste ending up in landfill begins as a purchase from one of the 5 big superstores. • The sudden growth of ‘fake local’ stores under the big superstores brands presents yet another threat to small independent stores. For example, Tesco ‘Express’ stores have reportedly caused drops in business of 30–40 per cent for other local shops. • The average person now travels 893 miles a year to shop for food. What a waste. Source: New Economics Foundation (www.neweconomics.org) and Tescopoly (www.tescopoly.org.uk)

What happened elsewhere could happen here. Addressing claims that their edge-oftown superstores act as ‘magnets’ for other local shops, Rab Smith, from Dumfries Retailers Association, where such a store opened in August 2004, argues that while local stores may still attract customers for the more specialist products that these stores don’t sell, such stores sell all the ‘best sellers’ cheaply. These ‘best sellers’ are vital to small retailers as they provide substantial and reliable sales. As one record shop owner in Dumfries puts it, “The new Tesco in Dumfries now sells chart music cheaper than me, so people now only come to me for the rare stuff and the staple 35% of my income from chart music has disappeared.” “Tesco has hit the town really badly. My turnover went down 50% the day it opened. The local Co-op is now a funeral parlour, the baker’s has become a Chinese takeaway restaurant and the butcher has had to go into wholesaling to survive. But I am determined to keep going.” Or look at Castle Douglas. The town decided to market itself as a ‘Food Town’, a concept set up to celebrate and re-affirm the town’s vibrant local economy with around 80 independent shops providing a wide range of products including many food shops selling local produce, including some with their own farms. (Does this sound like somewhere you know?) It had a large Co-op, but unlike nearby Dumfries, no superstore. Castle Douglas is the main driver of the local rural economy. Tesco applied to build a store and petrol station on the edge of town, pulling out all the stops to persuade the local population that it would be good for Castle Douglas, yet 1200 locals signed a petition against the store. Local retailers also feared that Tesco would affect their seasonal trade. Some people said that local

The same old same old - on the outskirts of anywhere. Is this really what we want for Malton? What happens to local, independent businesses trying to compete with these giants?

shops would still get the customers, but traders were sure they wouldn’t get the tourists in the summer: they would see Tesco first as they came into the town and not bother with the centre. “Tourists coming to stay in the caravans and chalets only want to come in once for a weekly shop,” said local resident Marion Doherty. In April 2005 the county Planning and Environment Committee gave final planning permission for the Castle Douglas Tesco. The three councillors who voted against the approval were

Dumfries Councillors who already had experience of the Tesco Dumfries and recognised the damage that the store could do to Castle Douglas’ much loved Food Town status. “People who say that it isn’t going to affect the food town in the short and medium term are being complacent – you can’t re-establish a family butcher once it’s gone. The Food Town is about supporting something that already exists and is worth celebrating,” said Jimmy Craig of Ballards the Butchers in Castle Douglas.