Small traders fight to survive

Supermarket giants' dominance of the convenience retail market is having a devastating effect on some small businesses across the West Midlands.

With several superstores and mini-markets planned for towns and cities across the region, independent traders have warned they face closure as the stronghold continues.

But while the retailers' plans remain grand, the four main supermarkets have recently been subjected to an investigation over land-banking - holding onto sites for several years without developing them.

Of the four, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) found that Tesco held 55 per cent of land-bank sites it had identified.One of these is the Royal Hospital in All Saints, Wolverhampton. Tesco has owned the building since 2001 and says it wants to rejuvenate the historic site, and bring back health services there.

But some city regeneration workers have said there is a real fear the dilapidated site - which has become a magnet for prostitutes and drug dealers - will remain untouched for many more years.

A source said: "Tesco may have these great ideas but we'll be amazed if they stick to their promise. It's more likely they will get planning permission and then sell the land for a huge profit."

Tesco did remain true to building two Tesco Express stores in the city - a move that has hit smaller businesses hard.

Even the Express & Star-owned Stars News is feeling the effects. In the week that a new Tesco Express opened in Wolverhampton's Penn Road, our shop across the road lost £4,500.

Managing director of Stars News Paul Siviter said: "We were expecting the new Tesco to have an impact and knew we would be hit badly in the first week.

"It's inevitable because there's always going to be some novelty value when a new shop opens."

Today the superstores were subject to an inquiry by the Competition Commission, whose preliminary findings talk of a concern that Tesco and other companies are taking a "stranglehold" on shops in towns and cities.

Businesses in Willenhall Road, Wolverhampton, where a Tesco Express is set to open in days, have told of their fears of the impact the new store will have on trade.

And in the Wyre Forest district a councillor has claimed proposals for a Tesco superstore at Stourport-on-Severn will "decimate" shops.

In Sandwell, many small traders have been forced out by supermarkets.

Among them are shops in Wills Way, Smethwick, which are awaiting demolition after trade slumped to a dramatic low.

In Walsall, plans have been in the pipeline since the end of 2005 to build a Tesco Extra store on the site of Walsall College of Arts and Technology.

Meanwhile Melvyn Taylor, of Melvyn's butchers in Cannock town centre, said: "If supermarkets like Tesco continue to open stores at the rate they have, it will eventually kill off the high street altogether which would be a real shame."

But Michelle Phillips, from the One Stop Shop, on Turners Lane in Brierley Hill, said: "We have got a big Sainsburys near to us, but I can honestly say that we hold our own."