How much floor space, Stourport Bridge looking good, and a few bits and bobs

I'm still wading through the additional data from both the West Mercia Annual Report and Appendix B of the Sustainability Appraisal Scoping Report. The list of major stores in Appendix B (p67/(63 internally)) caught my eye. As is my wont I copied them over to a spreadsheet, oh no wait the document is protected, I ended up OCR'ing it instead to ensure accuracy; thanks WFDC.

The data's from 2005 so not completely fossilised, though it does show Waitrose as an occupant. What's most interesting is that it shows Gross Floorspace and Net Floorspace for all the properties listed. Now according to the Tesco planning application the site in Kidderminster is only 5,400 square metres. According to this report it's 7,590 ah but they must be talking net space which again according to this report equals 4,934 square metres, but is the closer figure and assuming internal restructuring is entirely plausible.

So playing with the data in various ways something interesting shows up, ignoring the obsolete and lone 'Town Centre' location of Waitrose, the properties in the 'Supermarket' category split between Out-of Centre (Sainsbury's, Co-Op, and Somerfield) and Edge of Centre (Aldi, Safeway, Tesco). Interesting because it's equal numbers, but more interesting when you check the percentage of net floorspace compared to gross floorspace.

Edge of Centre

Aldi - 780/1200 = 65%
Safeway - 2354/3621 =65%
Tesco - 4634/7590 = 65%

Out of Centre

Sainsbury's - 6116/7645 = 80%
Co-op - 2094/2618 = 80%
Somerfield - 1122/1403 = 80%

In the interests of accuracy there is some variance between them when you get to the first decimal place. Now let's look at the proposed Tesco in Stouport which would probably be classified as Edge of Centre

Proposed Tesco - 2403/5015 = 48%

That's a big difference and again asks the question - what is this store really aiming at.

For those interested the average of the percentages of used floorspace over all properties was 73%, median 80% and in the interests of fairness assuming Tesco's own figure of 5,400 their Kidderminster percentage rises to 71%.


They took all the protective sheeting from around the bridge ironwork some time ago revealing the new blue and beige colour scheme, I'm joking the beige is presumably the undercoat for the gold. It looks good, nice and um shiny, a good deep blue. Kind of ironic that after revealing it to the public they've now covered it back up in 'dustsheets' while they still working on the road.


I meant to get down to the Riverside to check out the continuing work on the skate-park or lack of work as the case may be. I may have noted the WFA comments, but the kicker is Fran's comment on 27th April with reference to the 16th

Have I missed something? This is NOT a Bank Holiday Weekend! The work is programmed now, or so I was told when I asked, to make sure it is ready for Half-term.

Quite correct there was no Bank Holiday then however Half-Term is at the end of this month and hey look there's one next Monday. I note no answer to my own "So is it going to be ready for the 5th?" yet.

Anyway I'd better confirm it's not all finished and so as I'll be walking up to vote in completely the wrong direction, I might as well get in some exercise and pop along tonight ;-)

Didn't report this, but the potholes on the Areley Common/Dunley Road junction were finally patched last Friday afternoon, meaning people can now turn right from the right hand side of the junction instead of swinging around to the left; yay! Sadly the ones in Dunley Road, particularly the nasty corner cut. have yet to be done and duh the bridge and Bridge Street still have there own unique form of speed-bumps in place.

Latest news - in an effort to keep small traders in Stourport the Co-op apparently have offered help in relocating the traders from the Indoor Market to other sites they own. With some scorn
being received for the offer. Nice that the council is trying to help and have offered a better range of properties including perhaps the old Severn Bar in Lombard Street not exactly a million miles from their current site. Um how about the original site of the market in Bridge Street, you know the one that's an eyesore in the town having been boarded up for, gods what is it now, 20 years? Sadly I don't think that the boarded-up Job Centre, also in Bridge Street, is large enough.