Lancaster anti-supermarket protest camp & update

New protest camp goes up in Lan­cast­er with local res­i­dents in sup­port — nobody wants a super­mar­ket with a huge park­ing here!



News Release
From: Lan­cast­er Cit­i­zens’ Alliance
For imme­di­ate release
Mon 8 Octo­ber 2007

Angry res­i­dents occu­py pro­posed super­mar­ket site

This morn­ing Lan­cast­er res­i­dents moved on to coun­cil owned land in Scot­forth — the site of a pro­posed super­mar­ket, rumoured to be Tesco’s. Locals are shocked by secret moves in the Coun­cil’s Cab­i­net to sell off land at Law­son Bridge, off the A6. Their mes­sage: they will not allow the coun­cil to sell off their town for what they call “dodgy devel­op­ment”.

Says local res­i­dent Deirdre Mason: “The coun­cil may love the idea of Tesco’s, Cen­tros Miller and the Bail­rigg Sci­ence Park, but local res­i­dents are con­cerned about the threat to local busi­ness­es and the unique char­ac­ter of the city! These devel­op­ments will be the death of Lan­cast­er. Time to say ENOUGH! to all these sor­did schemes. Let’s send a clear mes­sage to all these devel­op­ers: they are not wel­come in our town.”

The occu­pa­tion will last for 24 hours and will be fol­lowed by a protest out­side the Cab­i­net meet­ing tomor­row (Tues­day 9th Oct) at Lan­cast­er Town Hall from 9.30am onwards.

Res­i­dents are con­cerned about the way the Coun­cil is sell­ing off Lan­cast­er piece­meal, lead­ing to a town crip­pled by grid­lock, and hav­ing only “clone town” shops that are to be found in any high street in the coun­try. “The coun­cil is blink­ered when it comes to recog­nis­ing the his­tor­i­cal val­ue of our town, the
vibran­cy and high qual­i­ty of the local traders.” says Stephen Dick­in­son of Scot­forth. “They sold off our mar­ket — it’s now half dead. Now they want to see off the rest of the town cen­tre with Cen­tros Miller’s pro­posed mon­stros­i­ty and this mega super­mar­ket in Scot­forth. The time has come to say ‘Enough!’. It’s
time for our coun­cil­lors to lis­ten to us!”

-ENDS-

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please con­tact Deirdre Mason at the protest camp on:
07798 745613

Pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ties:
Mon 1pm at the protest camp, Law­sons Bridge, Scot­forth Road, Lan­cast­er
Tues­day 10am at Lan­cast­er Town Hall

Notes for the Edi­tor:
1 The land threat­ened by super­mar­ket devel­op­ment and cur­rent­ly under occu­pa­tion is near Law­son’s Bridge, between the rail­way line and the A6 (Scot­forth Road). Lan­cast­er City Coun­cil owns about 5.5acres there, imme­di­ate­ly to the south of Ray’s Dri­ve.

2 The land is cur­rent­ly rent­ed to a farmer for use as pas­ture. It is also well used by Scot­forth res­i­dents for dog-walk­ing and oth­er kinds of recre­ation, and there is a com­mu­ni­ty wood­land area at the north­ern end which is threat­ened by the devel­op­ment.

3 Lan­cast­er Coun­cil Cab­i­net will be dis­cussing the pro­posed sale in their Cab­i­net meet­ing on Tues­day, 9th Octo­ber. The meet­ing takes place at Lan­cast­er Town Hall at 10am.

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Update — The fight car­ries on (and we will win!)

At this morn­ing’s Cab­i­net meet­ing of Lan­cast­er City Coun­cil coun­cil­lors vot­ed 8–2 to go ahead with start­ing the process of flog­ging the land for a super­mar­ket. This despite an over­whelm­ing dis­play of pub­lic out­rage. Hun­dreds of peo­ple wrote to the Cab­i­net Coun­cil­lors over the week. Scot­forth Parish Coun­cil decid­ing unan­i­mous­ly to oppose the super­mar­ket in an emer­gency meet­ing last night night and mak­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion to the Cab­i­net this morn­ing. Dozens of res­i­dents camp­ing out in the threat­ened field. A well attend­ed ral­ly this morn­ing. All this hap­pened in the space of five days — since we found out about the pro­posed deci­sion.

Cab­i­net Coun­cil­lors this morn­ing had the guts to refuse even to con­sult peo­ple pri­or to the sale.
The Con­ser­v­a­tive leader of the Coun­cil, Cllr Roger Mace said “we’ve had lots
of emails so there has been a con­sul­ta­tion already”. At this point sev­er­al mem­bers of the pub­lic could no longer con­tain their anger — shout­ing “that was us con­tact­ing you, not you con­sult­ing us” and storm­ing out.

Lib Dem Coun­cil­lor for Scot­forth East (which bor­ders onto Law­son’s Bridge)
John Gilbert said that “start­ing to mar­ket the land will allow con­sul­ta­tion
to take place” and “the pub­lic can con­sult all they want” (sic).

This ridicules any pre­tense of a demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem (with the notable excep­tion of our Green Coun­cil­lors who blew the whis­tle on the issue and joined in with the protest).

How­ev­er we are only at the start of this process and already hun­dreds of peo­ple are furi­ous about the plans and deter­mined to resist them every step of the way. We have already fought off two plan­ning appli­ca­tions for this site and we shall do so again.

In the mean­time, maybe we all need to recon­sid­er the way we shop — kick the habit and stop shop­ping at Tesco/Asda/Sainsbury’s/etc. Get to know your local shop keep­ers, sup­port inde­pen­dent small shops, set up food co-ops, before it is too late and they as well as your green fields are gone for­ev­er. These super­mar­ket giants are rid­ing rough-shod over com­mu­ni­ties and the envi­ron­ment every­where.

To find out more about these issues vis­it: http://www.tescopoly.org/

Oh, by the way, we’ve not for­got­ten about the mon­strous Cen­tros Miller plans for our city cen­tre either. We’re just as deter­mined to see them off too! More info here: http://www.itsourcity.org.uk/

ENOUGH Is ENOUGH!