What sort of message sent out?

I would like to comment on your front page article on August 7, in connection with ASDA and the council.

I wonder what sort of message the council wants to send out to the rest of the country. As I see it Hereford could easily lose three of its largest employers over the next two or three years. Bulmer's factory could be centralised to an under-used factory of Scottish and Newcastle somewhere else in England, Wiggins factory could have the same fate and Sun Valley's factory could be moved to Eastern Europe by Cargill once they come under the EU badge, because it would be cheaper to employ people and to produce chickens and have a bigger market all round. Hence be able to supply the whole of Europe.

So if we do lose these three employers and ASDA does pull out where does the council think employers are going to come from? What do they think the good quality workers of Hereford are going to do? Hereford as I see it is a back water already, in the same sort of light as Cornwall, with poor infrastructure in terms of roads and at present bad access to Rotherwas. Any problem along the A49 through the city, brings the city to gridlock.

Your front page article tells the rest of the country that Hereford is not a place that you bring a business to, as it will take years to get things right. The Edgar Street development, which you have mentioned, is a classic example of this. I can not see it really taking off simply because of there being too many hurdles. An example of that is the moving of the cattle market. Also finding all the necessary money to pay for it all. So we can see from your article it will take the council so long to make their minds up and organise themselves that the Edgar Street development is just window dressing. A developer will only get involved for one reason and that is if they see a fat profit.

What reassurances do Mr Keetch and Mr Chapman give to any sizeable employer or developer thinking of coming to Hereford, when there are unemployment black spots nearby who try to accommodate them. Mr Keetch must feel he is losing a round with the council, simply because if we were to lose the three employers above. Then at the next election he would be viewed as not helping the county's problems and Mrs Taylor would not have to say a word or get out of bed.

As I see it the county of Hereford is going to become a perfect retirement hot spot for people from the South-East and London. Houses will be cheap because there will be no one in work (except at council and in health) to buy them. The pace of life will be slow because with few people working there will be no real rush hour. There are a variety of large shopping centres within easy driving distance. Hereford will be viewed a healthy place to live with all the countryside and slow pace of life.

If I seem to be putting the council down then the answer is yes.

I do not feel confident that they have our interests at heart. We might just as well still be tied up to Worcester, because I feel they seem that far away.

To finish, are there other people out there who feel the same?

Would the council like to let people with the same views as me, let us know where they see Hereford going over the next 10 years? .

PAUL PROSSER,

Kings Acre, Hereford.

ASDA's late into the market place

ASDA's tired of waiting (Hereford Times headline August 7). We must sincerely hope so.

There are already five supermarkets within the orbit of Hereford City centre, plus many other retail outlets with which they compete. The economy has, no doubt, improved since I last practised definitive business transfer agency (the sale/purchase of going concern businesses) over a wide area - the Marches and beyond. I only mention this because I was privileged to examine traders' books. Some were very healthy, others teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Village stores/post offices were never gold mines (their profit margins were/are poor) and they are being undermined by the government's decision to cut them out of the state pension market.

It is disappointing that planners (and their council controllers) do not bother to take note of what has happened in other rural towns which have been swamped by the huge financial muscle of supermarkets. Many of the smaller traders, who very often are the more interesting and individuals shops, are forced out of business and the town centres 'display' many empty shops. These days, the gaps get filled by charity shops, but this is usually only a stop-gap and does nothing for the wholesalers and manufacturers who supply them.

The attraction is, of course, that the planners are bought off by development 'gain'; in the current case it is the promise of money towards flood defences and, possibly, the lure of having their name attached to a major project. The chaos caused at Belmont roundabout and elsewhere, cannot be denied. The hardship caused to business and residents is real and the incidence (of flooding) is, very likely, on the increase. However, the money for flood alleviation should be coming from elsewhere. The rape of the local economy, however seemingly and inevitably beneficial, is too high a price. Once 'they' are there they are not going away.

G.B. PHILPOTT,

Kingsthorne , Hereford.

Annoyed four times over...

YOUR lead article page one last week August 7, managed to annoy me at least four times. The first paragraph "The chance of an ASDA store coming to Hereford could be slipping away" implies the "chance" is universally wanted. Really?

The inference that if the ASDA plan fails, the flood prevention 'sweetener' fails is all wrong, since any major developer, hotel, property or whatever could also be persuaded to pay such a sweetener.

An ASDA spokesperson says the supermarket would provide about 400 jobs. Since a supermarket's success depends on labour efficiency, it can only prosper if the number of jobs in food retailing is reduced. Small local shops will therefore close or be even less labour efficient ie lose money. Unless, of course, we're all going to eat as much extra food as 400 people can sell us.

For a desirable riverside location is this the best that Herefordshire Council can do for us? Looking at the present council I would say 'yes'. And the best the council can do on the prime cattle market site? A supermarket?

DAVID F.H. GARDNER,

Holme Lacy.

Think about small shops

I assume that the decision to incorporate a large supermarket development within the Edgar Street Grid was taken after careful assessment of its probable short and long-term impacts.

Well-documented evidence shows the consequences will include: a rapid decline in small retail shops such as butchers, bakers, pharmacies, thus creating financial losses for local businesses, unemployment and a reduction in choice for shoppers; supermarket work is low paid and low skilled, very little locally grown food will be stocked because supporting local farmers is not a priority, so there will be apples from Australia, pears from Peru, strawberries from Spain all demanding billions of air miles, and thousands of land miles from central distribution centres in huge lorries, thus making a significant contribution to air pollution; goods will be sold in tons of packaging and plastics for the council to dispose of; a supermarket will aim to attract large numbers of shoppers and provide free car parking thus depriving the council of revenue while encouraging heavy road traffic in and out of the city centre; the building will be of no architectural distinction.

Councillors appear to have made a commitment to damage the local economy, the environment in the city and the county, as well as to facilitate climate change.

R.J. BRADBURY,

Bradnor Green, Kington.

Busy city, large catchment area

Hereford is a busy city with a large, increasing catchment area, with a lot of new money available for expenditure.

However, there are very few major retailers and the ones who are present offer quite limited choice.

As a result, many people are quite prepared to travel an hour to Worcester, Cheltenham or Gloucester to satisfy their needs, more particularly as they can top up with fuel costing much less than is ever available in Hereford. For those who do not have the facility for such travel, they are left with the aforementioned limited choice.

The solution to this problem of Hereford losing this vast commercial inflow of cash appears to be the desire to develop the Edgar Street Grid with housing, small retail outlets and, as its centrepiece, brand new council offices. This plan is designed, if we are to believe Paul Keetch and the council as reported in your paper, to "attract more visitors to Hereford and improve the town's image".

I can imagine that thousands will visit Hereford to specifically gaze in wonder at our new council offices and police station. But where will all these people spend their money? This potential gold mine of visitors will jump in their cars and drive off to where they can spend their money.

If plans go ahead as they appear at present, one can only hope that our new edifice will not have the same planners as sanctioned the hideous eyesore which is our new probation offices in Gaol Street.

W.T.W. FREARY,

Station Road, Credenhill.

Flood defence costs escalate

Reading Mr J Turner's article (Business Times, August 7) advertising the proposed ASDA Development, it seems from his figures that the total cost of the entire Flood Defence Scheme has been estimated at about £5 million.

If,and it is a big if, central government sources contribute 50%, and there is no telling how long it would take those sources to produce the cash or even to decide about producing it, the balance £2.5 million would appear to leave only £0.5 million to be found locally.

As nobody knows the time scale for this worthwhile work it is virtually certain that the final cost will be far in excess of that now envisaged.

D. Jordan,

Millard Close, Newton Farm.

An attractive riverside setting

Simon Hoare can talk until he's hoarse in promoting ASDA big business on a site which provides the opportunity of developing an attractive riverside setting for the benefit of the character of the city as a whole.

The simple fact is that almost entirely filling the site with what amounts to a very large commercial shed (no matter how prettified or given a few sops to community spiritedness) has never been in accordance with previous, present or proposed planning for the area.

What is needed here is a smaller scale of mixed development, including a fair quantity of housing, and not just a few flats in a single block - all as presented in the emerging Unitary Development Plan.

That way, this stretch of river could be opened up for public, not private, benefit.

Citizens and visitors alike could enjoy an environment on a more pleasing domestic scale. The river is one of the city's greatest assets, not to be diluted for purely commercial reasons - which, incidentally, require an attractive city in the first place to entice business to it.

It might be added that, notwithstanding the comments in the same issue by Jon Turner, a commercial property agent, his views of the changing face of Hereford for the better are not necessarily shared by local residents.

Harry Chadwick,

Rectory Road, Hampton Bishop.