SO Tesco is not going to follow up on their plans in Kirkbymoorside?

How pathetic and disappointing.

There was far too much foot-dragging by the company for residents to be hopeful that they would fulfill their plans.

Sadly, I had sensed this would be the outcome. At least some established businesses will be, temporarily, sighing with relief while those that saw a Tesco store as being a positive service development, as well as being money saving and fuel saving, will feel a loss.

I find Tesco’s Mark Thomas’s explanation that: “the shopping habits of our customers have changed in recent years, with more people choosing to shop online and in convenience stores”, demonstrates Tesco planners have been completely out of touch and backward in their analysis of future directions to pursue and/or they see more profit in investing in overseas ventures.

Preferably more successfully than their pitiful, failed attempt at competing in the North American market by expanding to the US with their “Fresh and Easy” chain.

Surely the argument that people are shopping for their groceries online and by delivery is a “chicken and egg” situation because, it seems to me, that if there was a decent-sized grocery outlet nearby people would much prefer to shop locally in person.

Conversely, the concept of hundreds of little delivery vans burning petrol as they scurry around delivering tins of beans all over the rural neighbourhood cannot, in these resource saving times, be the right direction in which to go.

I hope that the council will now seek out an alternate, more progressive, food purveyor who sees the opportunity to properly serve a community as a viable one to pursue.

Now, perhaps, Kirkbymoorside can seize the opportunity to now be in the driver’s seat and seek a company with a more progressive and holistic outlook to occupy the site.

Jim Rivis, Montpelier, Vermont, US