IF Tavistock Chamber of Commerce and individual shopkeepers don't change their ways, it won't be a supermarket that finishes the town centre off, it will be down to them.

The way people shop has changed beyond recognition since Robert Creber's family started the much renowned delicatessen 132 years ago and the shops within Tavistock town centre need to change with the times or they will go the same way as Woolworth, Focus, Comet and Jessops, to name but a few.

I totally agree with Robert Creber that the town and supermarket need a more even playing field, with less restriction on parking, and councils being less greedy by giving free parking and not having parking enforcement officers, leaving shoppers afraid that they will park for five minutes too long and get a fine.

Tavistock is a lovely town with so much to offer architecturally and historically, with the pannier market and regular farmers' markets, but also needs to have quality shops to attract shoppers in, not all pasty shops, take-aways and charity shops.

I totally back the use of the old Focus building on Plymouth Road as a supermarket, which will bring with it much needed employment to the area for local people, who will in turn spend their newly acquired wages in the newly re-modelled shops in the town centre and breathe new life into the surrounding businesses and business rates into the needy coffers of West Devon Borough Council.

A new supermarket in the old Focus building will attract people to the town and keep its residents shopping locally instead of going to the supermarkets in Launceston and Plymouth and shopping there.

I don't agree with a greenfield site development when the old Focus stands empty with planning consent for a supermarket and Tesco willing to take the property and invest in the area. Empty shops don't do anything for a town and the quicker Tesco or whoever opens their store the better.

Peter Palmer

Oak Road

Tavistock

ANYONE who regularly visits Tavistock cannot fail to see the slender grasp that the town struggles to retain on its long term sustainability, slowly slipping.

Each shopper that shops 'out of town' instead of shopping in the town silently reduces the profitability of those who remain.

As retail shops close through lack of customers, the town's appeal to visitors reduces, causing fewer people to see the need to visit, causing further closures.

The rise in the number of charity shops measure the impact well. One by one, each charity shop has replaced a shop offering the mix of retail which makes Tavistock so appealing.

So be very careful what you wish for. Out of town supermarkets have irreparably damaged Plymouth, the market end of which now resembles a ghost town. Tavistock stands on the brink. Think about it. 

Ric Cheadle

Yelverton

THE knee-jerk reaction from Nigel Eadie, chairman of Tavistock Chamber of Commerce, in last week's Times regarding the prospect of a new supermarket coming to Tavistock, was as negative and shortsighted as it was predictable. Has he given any thought to the positive benefits such an opportunity could offer, the jobs, the investment and choice which our town badly needs?

We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend we are living in the fifties. These days people will exercise their right to choose as to how or where they shop. Objecting to all progress and new development in the misguided belief that the status quo must be preserved at all costs does Tavistock and its residents a huge disservice.

The latest retail studies suggest the 'do nothing' approach will end up having the opposite effect, leading to stagnation and endless charity shops as people shop elsewhere and we fall behind our more enlightened neighbours. Nigel Eadie purports to speak for the Tavistock business community, but as someone who attended the last chamber meeting I witnessed that there was substantial support for a new supermarket.

The chamber only represents a small number of local businesses, and seems to have a disproportionate sway on both town and borough councils. The Focus site has been an eyesore for long enough. It is obviously the best place to accommodate a supermarket, and avoids building on a greenfield site further out of town.

We have a choice to make, and I say we all take a positive role in engaging in the process rather than bury our heads in the sand, and hoping this issue goes away. It won't.

Martin Hawkins

Unit 10

Plymouth Road

Indutrial Estate

Tavistock

I AM getting increasingly frustrated with the Focus building subject. Perhaps if the landlords of Tavistock town centre would lower the high rents charged, the centre would be struggling an awful lot less and the independents would be opening thick and fast.

Time and time again when i've asked yet another struggling independent why they are closing, I have been met with the reply that the rents are too much for them to cope with.

Have the people complaining about the possibility of 'yet another supermarket' opening ever visited Morrisons only to find the shelves empty of basics such as bread or queued in any of the supermarkets for 15 minutes with three children in tow? No? Thought not! I have, on many occasions!

I believe that Tavistock could do with a high-end supermarket and I would still continue to buy what I currently do in the centre but the hypocrisy of solely blaming supermarkets for the decline of the town centre is not going unnoticed by me, that's for sure.

M McAngus

Lakeside

Tavistock