Sheila Oliver

Evidence compiled to date — further material held by the author

Other Books by this Author

The “Vexatious? Moi?” series:

Book 1: Harcourt Street and Vale View Primary School

Book 2: Padden Brook

Book 3: The Bent Bypass (the A555/SEMMMS Manchester Airport Relief Road)

Book 4: Sandringham Road

Book 5: Offerton Precinct

Book 6: Marple Money (the Marple Active Communities Hub)

Book 7: The Wall of Silence — How Stockport Council Blocks the Questions It Doesn’t Want to Answer

Book 8: The Foggbrook Files

Book 9: Arms Length — The Story of Stockport’s Own Companies

Book 10: For Hire — The Consultants Councils Can’t Refuse

Book 11: The Price of Civic Duty — How Stockport Council Spent While It Cut

Book 12: Paying The Piper: Stockport’s MPs And The Price Of Public Money

Book 13: Lessons In Privacy. How Stockport Grammar School Learned To Ask For Forgiveness Rather Than Permission

Book 14: Three Floors Or Four. Aquinas College, Nangreave Road. The Development No-One Living Opposite Asked For.

And, outside the series:

Learning Law From a Lawless Council (Stockport) — the Michael Parnell case

Introduction

In 2004 Tesco opened a supermarket at Tiviot Way, Portwood, Stockport. It was built substantially larger than the planning permission allowed. What followed is one of the best-documented episodes in this series: a public pledge of “no special treatment”, a council motion deploring the company, an area committee that refused to make the extra floorspace lawful, a full committee that then let the store stand on conditions, and a final decision referred upwards to the Secretary of State.

This volume sets the papers side by side. Its purpose is not to say what the outcome should have been, but to show what was said, by whom, and how the accounts fit together.

Timeline

Date	Event	Source
May 2003	Permission granted for a 9,430 sq m gross store	Stockport Express, 2 Mar 2005
Nov 2004	Store opens; Express reveals it exceeds consent by 1,665 sq m	Stockport Express
4 Feb 2005	Tesco letter (Shaun Edgeley) to Mrs Oliver — referred to in Tesco’s 2006 letter	Tesco letter, 31 Aug 2006
2 Mar 2005	Cllr Hogg pledges no special treatment	Stockport Express
18 Aug 2005	Council motion deploring Tesco’s unapproved increment	Council minutes
15 Feb 2006	Guardian reporter Paul Lewis asks Mrs Oliver and Mr Parfett for interviews for a Saturday Tescopoly story	Email
24 Mar 2006	Council writes that retrospective application DC021611 has been withdrawn	Council letter
25 Apr 2006	BBC News 24 producer seeks an interview, pegged to Tesco’s record profits	Email
2 May 2006	Guardian reporter Patrick Barkham advises on FOI and council land deals with Tesco	Email
13 Jun 2006	Daily Mail reporter asks to be kept informed	Email
31 Aug 2006	Tesco letter to Mrs Oliver	Tesco letter
1 Sep 2006	Council confirms new retrospective application DC022158 goes to Tame Valley Area Committee on 11 Sep	Council letter
4 Sep 2006	Paul Lewis (Guardian) says he will push for a story	Email
11 Sep 2006	Area committee refuses retrospective consent	MEN, 14 Sep 2006; council letter
11 Sep 2006	Granada Television News asks Mrs Oliver for an interview about the refusal	Email
21 Sep 2006	Full planning committee approves with conditions; final decision referred to the Secretary of State	Stockport Express
21 Sep 2006	Friends of the Earth relay urgent television requests to Mrs Oliver about the evening hearing	Emails
9 Oct 2006	Tesco replies to Mrs Oliver on fire and emergency-exit access	Tesco letter

Chapter One: What Was Approved, What Was Built

Stockport Council granted permission in May 2003 for a foodstore of 9,430 square metres gross. The store opened in 2004. The Stockport Express reported in November 2004 that it had exceeded its consent by 1,665 square metres, and Tesco then applied retrospectively. The council’s own letter of 1 September 2006 gives the retrospective application (DC022158) as an A1 foodstore of 11,095 square metres gross, with petrol filling station, car park, landscaping and highway works, on land at Water Street/Tiviot Way.

	Figure	Source
Permitted (May 2003)	9,430 sq m gross	Stockport Express, 2 March 2005
Retrospective application	11,095 sq m gross	Council letter, 1 Sept 2006 (DC022158)
Excess	1,665 sq m (about 18,000 sq ft; about 17.7% over)	Express; council minute of 18 Aug 2005

The press later described the store as “20 per cent too big”, and one press summary spoke of “just over 9,000” and “more than 11,000” square metres. The council’s own figures give a precise excess of 1,665 square metres, which is the number used here.

Chapter Two: “No Special Treatment”

On 2 March 2005 the Stockport Express reported a campaign by more than 200 small businesses, led by Steve Parfett of Parfetts Cash and Carry, demanding that Tesco demolish up to a fifth of the store. Mr Parfett said the extra space equalled 19 independent shops and that no one else would get away with it.

Cllr Kevin Hogg, chairman of the planning regulation committee, told the paper Tesco would be treated in exactly the same way as any other trader, and that the planning system had strict legal procedures which would be applied properly. He also explained why no enforcement notice had yet been served:

“To enforce simply because there is a breach of planning control, without sufficient evidence to demonstrate material harm in planning terms, would raise the potential for an award of costs on appeal.” — Cllr Kevin Hogg, Stockport Express, 2 March 2005

He added that the council would not hesitate to use its enforcement powers if the assessment showed problems Tesco could not address. Tesco’s case at that stage, as reported, was that the extra floorspace was for bulk storage rather than trading and would have no retail or traffic impact.

Chapter Three: Whose Decision Was It?

Two documents give different accounts of how the store came to be oversized.

The first is the minute of the full Council meeting of 18 August 2005. On a motion under Rule 12 the Council noted that the store had been built 18,000 sq ft bigger than the approved plan, that the Planning Department had been advised that the increment “was the direct result of a management decision within Tesco”, and that a Times article of 2 August 2005 indicated that complex planning procedures associated with Tesco are not uncommon. The Council resolved that it “deplores the action of Tesco”.

The second is Tesco’s letter to Mrs Oliver of 31 August 2006. It says that during construction “unexpected adjustments” sometimes have to be made to the original plans, which can lead to a retrospective application; that Tesco has never suggested it is normal practice to build larger than the consent; and that Ms Neville-Rolfe explained to the Parliamentary Commission that Tesco drew the attention of Council officers to the issues that had arisen during construction.

These are not necessarily irreconcilable, but they emphasise different things: a management decision on one hand, problems encountered on site on the other. Which account the evidence supports is the central factual question of this book, and the papers supplied do not settle it.

Chapter Four: The First Application Is Withdrawn

A council letter to Mrs Oliver dated 24 March 2006, signed by the Head of Development and Control, refers to a retrospective application for the same 11,095 sq m foodstore, petrol filling station, car park, landscaping and highway works under reference DC021611, and states that it “has now been withdrawn”. The application that reached committee in September 2006 carried a different reference, DC022158, with the same description.

It therefore appears that Tesco withdrew its first retrospective application and later submitted a second. The papers supplied do not say why it was withdrawn, whether anything in it was changed, or what happened in the six months between the two.

Chapter Five: The Area Committee Says No

The council wrote to Mrs Oliver on 1 September 2006 to confirm that her comments would be reported and that the application would go before the Tame Valley Area Committee on Monday 11 September 2006 at 6pm, with the possibility of onward consideration by the Planning and Highways Regulation Committee if the area committee did not decide it.

The area committee refused the retrospective application. About 550 square metres of the store — roughly a third of the excess — was closed until the issue was resolved. Tesco’s statement said it had publicly apologised, was keen to comply with whatever conditions planners wanted, hoped the decision would not mean eventual closure, and stressed the 500 jobs it had created and the 120 previously unemployed people it had trained.

The Manchester Evening News reported the decision on 14 September 2006 under the headline “Tesco’s little extra gets it in a lot of bother”. Mr Parfett said he was delighted and that it showed the value of local democracy, and he called for the extra floorspace to be handed over to the people of Stockport as an honourable compromise. A Tesco spokesman said the company was disappointed, that the last thing it wanted was the store pulled down, and that it would consider other uses. Tame Valley councillor Peter Scott said there was no real risk of closure, given the store’s trade. The paper said the application was likely to go to the full planning committee, with no date yet set.

One detail in that report needs care: it says the extra space was “18,000 sq metres”. The council’s own minute and the Stockport Express give 18,000 square feet, which equals roughly 1,670 square metres and matches the 1,665 sq m figure. The unit in the MEN report appears to be a slip.

Chapter Six: The Full Committee: “It’s in the Bag”

The refusal did not end the matter. A Stockport Express report headlined “It’s in the bag — Tesco keeps supersize store” records that the full planning committee voted the store through on the following Thursday, which was 21 September 2006. Councillors described themselves as in a Catch 22 position, because the council had no power to fine Tesco and the only alternatives were to accept the store or to order part of it demolished.

The committee attached conditions:

A 6,130 sq ft area already cordoned off inside the store was to remain unused until a future planning application is approved.
Tesco was to pay £788,502 towards a free town-centre circular bus service for five years, which the report says is £125,000 more than previously agreed.
The bus was to be “green”, and a public art sculpture on the site was to be protected from rain.

Mrs Oliver confirms the bus service was actually delivered: Tesco funded a free town-centre circular bus service, as the condition required.

The report quotes councillors on both sides. One said she would never be persuaded that the overbuild was not deliberate, but that pulling the store down would cost jobs in a deprived part of the borough. Another said refusal was the only option available but that there was no way to fine Tesco. A third called it the second most important planning decision in Stockport’s history. Mr Parfett called it a blatant breach of the planning system and said the scheme failed two of the council’s five criteria.

Because the application was contrary to Stockport’s Unitary Development Plan, the report states that the final decision rested with the Secretary of State, then Ruth Kelly. The papers supplied so far do not record what she decided.

Chapter Seven: Letters to Tesco

Mrs Oliver also wrote to Tesco directly. Besides the letter of 31 August 2006 discussed above, Tesco’s Property Communications Manager for the North West replied on 9 October 2006 to her letter of 2 October, assuring her that Tesco was “very mindful of our fire and safety obligations” and that access to emergency exits would be maintained as required. The reply is brief and does not reproduce the question, so the concern it responds to should be confirmed from her original letter.

Chapter Eight: The Press and the Campaign

Alongside the council papers, Mrs Oliver holds emails from journalists and campaigners who approached her during 2006 about the Portwood store. They are private correspondence sent to her as a source, not published material, so this chapter describes what each contact was about rather than reproducing the messages themselves; a handful of short phrases are quoted where the wording itself matters.

Over roughly seven months in 2006, national and regional media treated Mrs Oliver as the local point of contact for the Portwood story:

The Guardian’s Paul Lewis first got in touch in mid-February 2006, working on what he described as an in-depth piece about “Tescopoly” with the Stockport campaign as a possible focus; he wrote to her again in early September, by then pushing for a story to run within days.
A BBC News 24 producer asked in late April 2006 for someone with experience of Tesco developments to interview, prompted by the company’s results that day.
A Daily Mail reporter asked in mid-June 2006 to be kept informed of developments.
Granada Television News and a Channel 4 journalist both sought interviews around the 11 September 2006 area committee decision and the 21 September full committee hearing, the second approach relayed to her through two Friends of the Earth staff contacts rather than direct.

One exchange is worth setting out in more detail because of what it advises rather than who sent it. In early May 2006, a Guardian reporter replying to a query from Mrs Oliver about a comparable case in Norfolk explained that agreements of this kind between Tesco and a council can be difficult to obtain under Freedom of Information, since both sides may claim commercial confidentiality, but that it is “still worth having a go”. He added that Tesco itself describes such arrangements as normal practice, and suggested that, failing an FOI request, a local MP taking an interest had proved useful in his own case.

That advice bears directly on the open questions in this book: whether an agreement of this kind existed between Stockport Council and Tesco over the Portwood conditions, and whether it has ever been disclosed.

Chapter Nine: Tescopoly

The Portwood overbuild also found its way into print well beyond the local and national press. Andrew Simms’s book Tescopoly (Constable, 2007), which examines Tesco’s market power and planning conduct nationally, discusses the Stockport case directly, drawing on a BBC Radio 4 investigative programme, Face the Facts.

The book records that the programme’s presenter put the Stockport case to Tesco’s Corporate Affairs Director, Lucy Neville-Rolfe, and to Stockport councillor Kevin Hogg. Some points from that account:

The store opened in November 2004; by May 2005 the council had established that, at the store’s then size, it was unauthorised and lacked a valid planning consent.
Tesco wrote to the council that there had “never [been] any attempt … to bypass the planning process or mislead the council.”
Tescopoly reports that Tesco separately described this kind of retrospective enlargement as “a very common procedure across the whole construction industry” — a description at odds with Tesco’s own letter to Mrs Oliver of 31 August 2006, which states plainly: “At no stage have we suggested that it is normal practice to construct a building larger than the consent granted.”
Cllr Hogg told the programme he was “actually very, very surprised” by what had happened, and that in his time on the planning committee the council had not known the true size of the store until close to opening.
The stated reason for the original size restriction was to protect the vitality and viability of existing town centres and, the book says, safety — language that points toward traffic and access impact rather than the bulk-storage explanation Tesco gave the local press in 2005 (see Chapter Two).
Tescopoly places Portwood alongside similar Tesco size breaches the book records in Bury St Edmunds, Gunness in Lincolnshire, and the Wirral, where a council reportedly fined Tesco for breach of planning conditions on five separate permissions.

The contradiction between “a very common procedure” and “we have never suggested it is normal practice” is, on the evidence assembled in this book, the clearest single inconsistency in Tesco’s own public position on Portwood. It is quoted here only in short phrase, in keeping with normal limits on quoting published work; the passage can be read in full in Tescopoly itself.

Chapter Ten: The Beano Notices

The file also holds two pages from The Beano. A Minnie the Minx story shows small shopkeepers holding an emergency meeting at the town hall after supermarkets have driven them out of business, with a supermarket called “Toscos” at the centre of the plot; the second page ends with the town centre back in business. The strips do not mention Stockport, and whether they were prompted by this campaign or by the wider debate about supermarket power is for the author to say. They are described here rather than reproduced, because the pages are copyright and would need the publisher’s permission.

They do show how far the argument had travelled: from a Portwood planning file to a national children’s comic.

Open Questions

The record leaves these questions open:

What did the Secretary of State decide, and when?
Was the cordoned 6,130 sq ft area ever authorised, and how has compliance with the conditions been monitored?
Which account is right: a management decision within Tesco, or unexpected problems on site that Tesco reported to officers?
When and how did officers first discover the excess, and why was no enforcement notice served before the retrospective application?
The bus service was delivered, confirmed by the author. Was the full £788,502 secured by the S106 Agreement now visible on the council’s portal for DC022158, and does the agreement’s figure match the amount reported?
Why was the first retrospective application (DC021611) withdrawn, and what changed before DC022158?
Was there a land deal or other legal agreement between Stockport Council and Tesco at Portwood, and if so has it been disclosed under Freedom of Information or the Environmental Information Regulations?

The author holds further material on this case and it can be added to this volume.

Documents

Scans of the documents relied on, with addresses redacted. Newspaper cuttings are reproduced as evidence and would need the publishers’ permission for wider publication.