Blog: My hometown

Many moons ago Bruce Springsteen recorded a lament for the fate of a small American town, once a bustling place but now "whitewashed windows and vacant stores". He could have been singing about many places in Shropshire.

If you're not doing much this weekend, take a walk into your local high street and have a shufty. The chances are it's not a pretty picture. Then go and listen to My Hometown - you'll think The Boss is describing it exactly.

Yesterday's Shropshire Star announced that plans have been put forward to build a giant discount food store on the outskirts of Newport.

The site in question, off the A41 Stafford Road, already has permission for a 50-Bed Premier Inn hotel, a Beefeater restaurant and other craft shops and retail outlets.

According to the good people behind the plans: "This will increase the attractiveness of the town as a retail centre, and help retain some of the spending power that is available in the Newport catchment but which is currently being diverted elsewhere as the quality of the offer in the retail centre is inadequate."

Now, and this is an entirely personal opinion, I don't see how encouraging people to visit a retail site on the outskirts of a town will encourage those people to go into the town centre. Surely they'll turn up, do their shopping in the discount food store and other retail units, and then go home again.

After all, why would they need to go into the "inadequate" town if they've already done their food shopping? If the discount retailer decides to stock electrical goods as well, they may have bought a new TV or radio so, again, why would they want to go into the town?

It's the same with the people passing through. Will they come into the town and eat in the restaurants, or will they spend the night in the Premier Inn, eat and drink in the Beefeater and then go on their merry way? Answers in the comment box below.

When I was a boy, growing up in a small Shropshire town, I think there were at least four independent butchers; now there's one. And I'm going back less than twenty years.

We also had a fishmonger, fruit and veg shops, a baker, two or three fashion shops and a branch of Oxfam.

It's a different picture today. Like a lot of towns, there are plenty of hairdressers, bars and charity shops, but far too few independent retailers.

So, exactly how does a big discount food store on the outskirts of town, with plenty of free parking, help Mr and Mrs Jones to run one of the small shops in that town? They're already trying to compete against internet retailers and the big supermarkets. What benefits will this bring to them? I genuinely want to be told.

You find a similar argument when plans are announced to build a hulking great supermarket somewhere.

"It'll create jobs," say the people behind the hulking great supermarket.

"Ah," say the people opposing it, "but how many jobs will it cost?"

It's a good question, and I'm not sure I've ever heard a satisfactory answer.

Surely, and again this is a personal opinion, the best way to bring people into a town is to put the things they want in the town, not on its outskirts. Isn't it?

By Andrew Owen