HOW dare Tesco give bland assurances that 'they believe the store will provide a valued service to the local community' when, as recent reports have shown, they cannot be trusted to publish honest and proper accounts — accounts and trust upon which our councillors made their decision by, I recall, a majority of one on grounds that 'the new store will take only a small margin from the town centre . . .'  A 'small margin', however, as I know from bitter personal experience as an independent retailer, that is the town centre retailer's wages. The charity shops and empty units provide their own answer — and those empty units 'and volunteers' represent the loss of far more proper jobs and revenue to the town than the 100 or so part-time minimum wage shelf-fillers that Tesco will employ. Furthermore, the fact that Tesco are closing 43 shops elsewhere (with the loss, one imagines, of 4,300 jobs) because they were trading unprofitably gives the lie to their assurances. It suggests a different and undisclosed intention that derives from determination to grab total market share; a scenario which, demonstrably, shows them as being prepared to open new stores to trade at a loss until they are the last shop trading — by which time the town centre is bereft of retailers (as has happened at Dartford in Kent where the shops were demolished to make way for a store that is not now to be built) and the population left with no consumer choice at all. Clearly that planning permission for a Tavistock Tesco was awarded on the basis of disinformation regarding Tesco's financial and fiscal probity. It is my view that the decision should now be suspended, called in and subjected to a re-run of the council vote.  Such circumstances prove that Cllr Oxborough was right to challenge and appeal against the decision in 2014 and given these new facts it's time to challenge it again.  Lawrence Brodley Tavistock WITH reference to the letter from Cllr Philip Sanders on future housing development around Tavistock, so far it appears that there are plans for 900 new houses (plus any that the WDBC have up their sleeve but are not revealing) and according to Cllr Sanders they are touting around local landowners to get more land for even more development! All around the country we are hearing of overcrowded schools, long waiting lists at hospitals and surgeries and increasing difficulty to park in towns, yet councils are building more houses to increase the problem. Of course the building companies are rubbing their hands with glee. The trouble is, they promise the earth, schools, hospitals (and in our case a railway as well) but all their promises seem to go belly-up when it comes to actually providing them. Cllr Sanders states that all comments will be taken into account, so here are a few, before any house building starts. First of all get the railway money in your hot little hands, then get them to make a start on building the schools, surgeries, hospitals etc and start recruiting and training people in order to staff them, so by the time the houses are finished the facility will be all ready for people to use. While you are about it, put a new supermarket somewhere near the new housing estates instead of the one proposed on the old Do-It-All site. This will be almost impossible to get out of even with a moderate amount of traffic, unless there are drastic modifications to the exit road — and remember, 900 houses probably equal around 2,000+ people and 1,200/1,300 more cars, so let's have some more parking spaces or another car park around the town as well. Paul Mercer Peter Tavy