Site closure is food for thought

This can’t be Horsham surely, the town that ranks near the top of the list of the best places in England to live?

Snap out of your dream, it is. So how do concrete barricades and cold steel sheet shuttering fit in then, what are we expecting, much the same as Roffey perhaps whatever that may ‘eventually’ be.

Well I can’t hide my disappointment at this, not because a nice local restaurant has moved away, not because I live nearby and have done so for most of my life, but because of what may be to come.

There have been many rumours

and, although not officially in the public domain, these premises are most likely destined to become another major supermarket chain satellite convenience store.

Apart from the current appalling visual aspect why then should I be upset about this?

A convenience store right on my doorstep open all day selling inexpensive produce of many kinds and filling up an empty business plot.

Well it’s because I believe this is just another nail in the coffin for the town centre that is already imploding in on itself in a sea of coffee shops and restaurants.

It shouldn’t take a market analyst to see that if you don’t have shops to go to you won’t need the kind of supporting commercial infrastructure that goes with it.

I have witnessed St Leonard’s Road lose three shops, these being ‘The ‘Red shop’ on the corner of St Leonards Road and Sandeman Way, the confectioners at number 71 and the butchers at number 7 (now a beauticians).

The Silver Wok was of course the St Leonard’s Arms, ‘The Lenny’ to the locals, and originally a rather austere Victorian building before it was replaced by the current 1960s effort.

Never a great pub as I can recount but more successful at times as a restaurant.

St Leonards Road was at least 60cm narrower until it was rather sneakily turned into a town centre relief road!

Here I am banging on about history with a touch of sentiment thrown in but the point is to illustrate the general devolution of the road and the effect that a new store may have elswhere.

Does Horsham town centre really need another out of town supermarket to distract people from going there?

Does Brighton Road and St Leonard’s Road need any more traffic activity?

Do we want to risk losing quality stores which contribute to the welfare of the town and environment?

Do we want our Horsham to end up like most similar sized American towns with no down town? I think not.

Sadly however if this kind of ‘ad-hoc’ development goes unchecked that’s what we will end up with and what is worse, there is very little that can be done about it.

‘Oh’ you may say ‘nothing can be done’, well yes, maybe, but only if the purchaser of the premises has to apply for planning which he doesn’t because it’s not a change of use as it is already licensed to sell food and drink. Strange isn’t it that doubling the business hours, substantially changing the goods purveyed, increasing the traffic, probably tenfold, and creating chaos in the local roads does not qualify

as a change!

That unfortunately seems to be the case and has been the case all over the country where failed pubs have been bought up by supermarkets - check it out, google ‘pubs as supermarkets’.

I have said enough, got it off my chest, but at the end of the day it

will be up to the people of Horsham to make enough noise when the moment comes, which sadly may be too late!

I can’t help thinking though the Silver Wok site may be better as a residential development to add to the numbers who use the town centre!

MIKE DANCY

St Leonards Road,

Horsham