Am in complete agreement with this.

My own purely anecdotal feeling is that many locals only use the shops on HOP for 'top up' purposes. This is certainly true in our case as we tend to use other sources for perishable food items - butchers, fishmonger, greengrocers, Brockley market, Budgens. What remains we source from a supermarket and that is generally the Sainsburys in Forest Hill (with some reluctance I might add, see threads passim). The nett effect of this, if anything, is that we will get these same items from a more local shop, with less travel involved. Surely a good thing?

In the case of the remaining local users who would prefer to use the existing shops (wherever they may be), they can still do so. All that remains then are those who would start using the shops, if only the new supermarket, for the first time. Again, surely a good thing?

This post was last modified: 14-02-2012 03:43 PM by lacb.