BRITAIN’S leading supermarkets are preparing a new wave of expansion from their out-of-town bases into the high street in defiance of MPs’ warnings that their growth is destroying the fabric of local communities.

Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons, which between them control 74% of grocery sales, have built up “land banks” of hundreds of sites awaiting development.

The stores are now launching a concentrated effort to open high street convenience stores to tap a market in which they have had little presence for years. Tesco alone is to double its small, town centre groceries to 1,200 over the next 10 years, a move it is feared will lead to the closure of hundreds of independent stores. Sainsbury’s is likely to build hundreds more and Asda is making its first forays into convenience shops.

Meanwhile, dozens of new or replacement shopping malls, dominated by big chains, are in the pipeline on the edges of town centres, putting further pressure on traditional retailers.

The surge of expansion by the chains comes in the face of last week’s report by MPs — High Street Britain: 2015 — which was highly critical of their policies.

It said: “There is a widespread belief that many small shops will have ceased trading by 2015 with few independent businesses taking their place . . . Their loss will damage the UK socially, economically and environmentally.”

The MPs called for curbs on the takeover of small shops by chains, tighter planning rules and a retail regulator.

The big retailers have no plans to bow this criticism, however. Kevin Hawkins, director-general of the British Retail Consortium, said of the MPs’ report: “It was badly argued and the evidence base was perilously thin. They were there to grind an axe. They never pretended to be taking an objective view of the whole thing.”

Retail analysts say that, despite telling pollsters that they prefer small shops, most shoppers actually go to big, convenient, car-friendly out-of-town stores.

According to TNS, a market research company, Tesco alone now takes 30% of grocery spending in Britain. Its sales have gone up by 23.2% in the past two years, more than double the increase of its closest rival, Asda. Sales are set to soar over the next decade. Tesco has an estimated 185 land bank sites, nearly 60 of which have planning permission.

Although supermarkets are moving into high streets, new shopping parks will continue to multiply. With planning restrictions tighter for out-of–town stores in an attempt to protect countryside and promote town centre regeneration, many of the new sites are likely to be in urban shopping malls.

Wal-Mart, the American parent company of Asda, has even lobbied the World Trade Organisation for a wholesale scrapping of planning regulations to “remove any size limitations on individual stores, numeric limits on the number of stores in country (sic) and geographic limits on store locations”.

Supermarkets are not just moving into new locations but into whole new areas of retail.The chains, led by Sainsbury’s, will soon begin to open GPs’ surgeries following a rule change by the government.

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