HOWARD KEAL, one of the councillors voting on the sale of Wentworth Street car park, Malton, offers a personal view, saying the debate is not as black and white it has been painted.

A MISINFORMATION juggernaut is squashing everything in its path in the debate over a new supermarket for Malton.

Some opponents behind the rampage work on the principle that any fiction repeated often enough turns it to fact. Well, it doesn’t.

However many times placards are held up with “Save Our Car Park” written in red, the fact remains that the car park is under no threat and never was.

More than that, the sale of Wentworth Street car park would increase the number of spaces by more than 100.

All this in a car park that is used at only 18 per cent of its capacity on a weekday and an average of well under a third on Saturdays.

Some people won’t let facts get in the way of a good story. Here’s another fact – the spaces in the car park will be free for three hours.

Anyone, whether visiting the store or not, will be able to stay for nothing, which will promote linked trips to the town centre.

It means that the community not only keeps the family silver, we get to polish it for free.

Some opponents howl with protest over the cost of parking. The sale would make it free, they should be happy. Of course, they’re not. Just watch the letters.

A commentator on Radio 4’s You and Yours programme described the opening of a new supermarket as the salvation of Totnes as it increased the overall footfall by retaining shoppers who had been going elsewhere. It sounded remarkably familiar.

A study in 2008 showed that more than £27 million a year is spent by Ryedale residents on food shopping outside the district.

I ask people where they shop when they say that they oppose the building of another supermarket and it is amazing how frequently the answer is Sainsbury’s – in York.

It is these shoppers, who are very often high-spending, that we need to keep in Malton, which will be of benefit to traders across the board. Once we have lost them to York or Scarborough we’ve lost the lot.

A trip to Morrisons, where shoppers have to fight to park and queue at the checkout, is all the proof needed that it is massively over-subscribed and needs competition of equivalent size and weight.

A gap has been identified in the mid to high range of the market. Lidl and Aldi, which will be within yards of my family’s home, are at the budget end of the spectrum and will not plug that gap.

In the event a new store is provided at the car park site there is no doubt that people will supplement their supermarket shop by going to smaller traders, as they do now.

A pent-up demand from developers is reflected by the seven expressions of interest in the car park site and will result in another supermarket somewhere, should Wentworth Street fail to go ahead.

That level of interest also shows that claims about selling “at the bottom of the market” are wholly wrong – as does the record profits announced by major retailers. This is one sector where the market is on a high.

Sainsbury’s is already proposing to develop an alternative site in Showfield Lane and has even been publicly supported by one of the key opponents of the Wentworth Street development.

The Showfield Lane bid threatens a double blow: a supermarket divorced from the centre of town, which would damage local trade; and the loss of millions of pounds to invest in meeting the needs of our community.

It is important to promote our small independent shops, which is why an out-of-town store would be a worry. It would draw people away from the centre, whereas Wentworth Street is close enough help bring them in. A study of the pattern of use by visitors to a supermarket built in Beverley showed that 65 per cent of shoppers visiting the store’s car park made linked trips to shops in the centre of the town.

Grants to local councils are to be cut by 26 per cent and it is more important than ever that we make the most of the authority’s assets in the interests of local people.

Sale of the car park will net a minimum of £5 million and make projects possible including sprucing up the Malton’s Milton Rooms and improving the appearance of the town centre for residents, visitors and traders.

We have listened to concerns about the livestock market and long-stay car parking and as a result, the upper deck spaces have been taken out of the sale to continue to meet those demands.

Tenants on the site ranging from the scouts to the CAB will be found new homes and the council has already identified a need to put £500,000 aside to smooth the moves. It has also been claimed the council is sitting on a pile of cash. The reality is that every penny is committed to projects for which some of us have fought, ranging from the Malton sports centre to flood defences in Pickering.

There’s more to say, but room for just one more point.

Our independent traders offer a level of personal service that is not – and will not be – matched by any supermarket. Their success rests with the decisions all of us make on where to give our custom.

Our shops are in good hands. Yours.