Fears that large out-of- town supermarkets will kill town centres overlook the fact that consumers may prefer the newer experience, writes Aengus Collins
It is a short drive from the town of Basildon, east of London, to the outlying village of Pitsea, home to one of Britain's largest Tesco outlets. A bus connects the two, but shoppers at the Pitsea Tesco invariably drive. This becomes clear on arrival at the car-park. It is vast. The supermarket building itself is huge, but it is somehow diminished by the sheer volume of vehicular activity on its doorstep. Boots open and close, trolleys are emptied and returned, children scream, engines start, new cars arrive, alarms beep - and on it goes.
Strange to say, but I had been looking forward to visiting this supermarket, perhaps anticipating an encounter with the cutting edge of retail science, new strategies dreamed up to separate me from my money. Certainly, I was expecting long, wide aisles and an overriding sense of space, an image fostered in part, no doubt, by the knowledge that some of the staff here wear roller skates.
The disappointment, then, is instant and palpable. Despite its size, with 43 checkouts stretching all the way to the in-store post office, it feels cramped. The aisles are shorter than envisaged and a mess of hustle. There are trolleys everywhere. For every car outside, there's a trolley inside, and no sign of the navigational acumen required to co-ordinate its movements. It is perhaps fortunate for the health and safety of the surly staff that there is not a roller skate in sight (an urban myth, it would appear). It is strangely unsettling here, a great glorified barn with fluorescent lighting suspended from a corrugated roof.
As things stand under current regulations, a superstore like this cannot be built in the Republic of Ireland. Supermarket floor spaces are restricted and Ireland's largest Tesco, in Tallaght, is less than half the size of its Pitsea counterpart. We should probably be thankful.
Recently, however, the Government decided to fly a kite, indicating that it may reconsider the cap on retail floor space. Cue general panic, and a wave of fear that our traditional retailers will be overwhelmed by giant, out-of-town and most probably foreign-owned superstores. Should we be worried?
Back in Basildon high street, there are few signs that the town centre has suffered in the shadow of the giant Tesco or the range of other out-of-town centres within driving distance. On the contrary, the place is awash with shops and abuzz with shoppers. If anything, Basildon retailing is too healthy - there are shops everywhere.
The town square is lined by branches of the big high street chains and is bookended by a brace of shopping centres. It is vibrant, but it's not pretty, an illustration of a salient point in all of this: soulless commercialism doesn't require large floor spaces to flourish.
A few minutes' walk from the town square, there is a small outdoor market. It's cheap tat for the most part, but three fruit and vegetable stalls look like stalwarts of traditional town-centre trading. The food looks great and is cheap. Presumably, the stall workers will be keen to bemoan the relentless expansion of the supermarkets.
Think again. The woman I speak to behind one of the stalls is a fan of the Pitsea Tesco and of out-of-town superstores in general. Why? For the convenience of shopping with a trolley and a car. It's that simple, she says. The tomatoes, the cauliflowers and the peppers are neatly stacked behind her and the stall is full of colour, so it's surprising that she makes no reference to the quality on offer out at Tesco. I have to prompt her for an assessment of their fruit and veg.
"Oh, it's much worse," she answers. "And it's much dearer."
But she doesn't seem particularly bothered, and her enthusiasm is undimmed.
"I wouldn't knock 'em," she goes on. "That's how people shop now. They want to park the car, take the trolley, pay with a card and out the door. People don't want to walk around markets any more."
Coming from a woman whose livelihood presumably depends on people walking in markets, this candour is among the more charming things I encounter in Basildon.
The experts confirm the central importance of the car in determining our patterns of consumption. Richard Hyman is chairman of Verdict Research, a UK company specialising in retail analysis. Most UK food shopping is now done away from town centres, he says. Personal preference and social necessity have converged upon increased use of the car, and this has led shoppers out of town in search of parking.
"We live in a car-borne society," he explains. "Most of us have cars, and we want to do pretty much everything using our cars. But beyond that, the way we shop has changed. Food shopping used to be a more frequent activity, and it could be done in smaller town-centre shops.
"But the time required for that kind of shopping no longer exists. With increasing numbers of women working, shopping has become more and more a weekly activity. And that changes the kind of goods being purchased. The shopping we require to sustain a household for a week is generally quite bulky. For most of us, it requires a car."
We sometimes imagine ourselves as pawns in the supermarkets' games, but all of this suggests that we have a clear rationale for shopping at bigger, less central shops because of the better parking these locations offer. We are not unwitting dupes in this story. We have preferences and we make choices accordingly.
The supermarkets make for a convenient villain, and it is certainly the case that they will aggressively exploit any opportunity to boost their sales. But it is disingenuous of us to suggest that they bear all the responsibility for our changing shopping habits and for whatever effect those habits have on our towns and cities.
If we are honest, we will perhaps acknowledge that the Retail Planning Guidelines are there to protect us from ourselves as much as from a predatory horde of multinationals. Given the opportunity to shop in out-of-town hyperstores, there is little doubt that we, like the British, would flock there in our tens of thousands. If the floodgates opened, if the floor space cap were simply lifted, the resulting tide would not be of IKEAs, Tescos or Wal-Marts, but of us, car-bound and shop-happy.
The issue of size is something of a distraction here. The main threat to small traditional retailing is the simple fact that we no longer shop in that way, in sufficient numbers, for it to remain sustainable. We have chosen to do otherwise. The trade-off between service and familiarity on the one hand and price and convenience on the other comes into play long before the out-of-town hypermarket enters the equation. In Ireland the floor space cap may have slowed, but it certainly hasn't prevented the decline of smaller, independent shops. We, like the British, are voting with our car keys and wallets.
It is an unpalatable fact. We are consumerist enthusiasts, despite our better instincts and our protests. The multinationals play their role, but we are our own worst enemies in this, killing the things we profess to love. No amount of regulation will save the small family-run shop if people cease to choose to shop there. It is that simple. Ultimately, as a society, we get the shops we deserve.