Hi Lin
I will try and answer both you comments.
Firstly I am not sure how much by way of suggestions it is fair to ask any of us for alternatives to the Asda plans, I am not a town planner and don't have the resources of the worlds largest conglomerate behind me to flesh out any ideas. I do think we need a food supermarket and I believe there are a number of potential sites, the London Inn, the Royal Mail sorting office, the back of Boots/Sommerfield etc, and the KFC roundabout are all possible sites for such a store. I am not just against Asda, though I do believe that is the worst possible choice (and so did many who responded to Unlocking Exmouth 1)
I don't think we need a clothes shop, we are not Exeter and never will be.There will always be reasons to go out of Exmouth for certain wants, but Exmouth should have stores that provide the staples. A local man did put quite a detailed proposal forward for the London Inn and it was reported, with diagram, in the Journal some while back.
I am not particularly pro Tesco, in the UK they are in general more of a threat to the community than Asda. I am not particularly for or against their expansion plans for Exmouth, history tells us that once these places have a foot in the door then they will always expand - another reason for not having a superstore on the estuary, eventually they will want to expand it even further.
With regard to the Asda Exmouth site and questions/comments for Asda. It would be nice if these people would engage in dialogue and not just pronounce from on high. I have emailed Asda several times over aspects of their trading that might embarass them - and have never had a reply. Do you know for instance, that they got into trouble with the Advertising standards over some of their claims, or that they had to pay compensation to workers for anti-union activity? (See http://www.talkingretail.com/news/1300/ASA-Rules-Asda-Must-Drop-Low-P.ehtml and http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/jun/13/politics.supermarkets) You won't read about those aspects on their website!
Too many involved with these matters are reluctant to answer questions in public and they expect us just to accept what they say when they want to say it. We have the Town Clerk apparently unwilling to answer questions here, the Leader of EDDC Sarah Randall Johnson unwilling to accept a meeting from the Exmouth Citizens Forum (according to todays Journal), and, on the face of it, Asda not wanting to get involved in a debate but just going through the motions.
In the past I have written to both the Town Clerk and Sarah Randal Johnson and, like Asda my correspondence has been ignored.

I understand where you are coming from 100% in terms of feeling ignored, it is only becuase I am the administrator for Exmouth Online, a busy community site, that any emails of mine get any notice, otherwise, they will just get binned. That is not to say I have had any replies of everyone and as of yet, RE ASDA and Tesco, I am still waiting. As said, please click the reccommend a friend _link_ at the top left of this site and email anyone you wnat to ask questions to, inviting them to comment on the forums, this will be the best chance to get them commenting so that both sides can get some more facts and questions answered, truthfully. Another option is to join the For ASDA Group or AGAINST ASDA group in the groups option on the right hand usermenu when logged in on the home page. You can then inite people to the group and organise groups pecific events and have your own dedicated forum!

hi there,

in response for an alternative plan other than asda on the estaury, the answer is simple. the only positive action that can be taken is to encourage local producers to start entering the town centre and increase market days. eventually local produce will be our only source of food any how, due to the oil crises, and the council must recognise that local resilience to change is very weak in exmouth, as compared to other small communities such as totness and falmouth. the phrase transition town will be heard more regularly in time to come. the idea of this is to look for ways that a community can lower its dependence on oil, and eventually support itself. a massive project, i know. but one that must begin soon. allowing asda into exmouth is a short term answer to a long term problem, and is effectively ten steps back from what exmouth needs to continue as a thriving community. with only supermarkets here to provide our basic needs, exmouth will awake with one hell of a hangover after peak oil kicks in. it may sound radical, but look at transition town totness to see how they are handling the situation, and you will notice that one of their _object_ives is to 'close morrisons'!!

I must admit that, even sceptic that I am, I had not realised the extent to which some companies have added to pollution. On it's own Asda-exmouth website, Asda tell us it "has taken over 30 million miles off the roads since 2002". If it has taken that much off it begs the question what was the extent of the pollution before, and how much remains?
How much pollution is Tesco causing?
For all the spin about local produce, Alison Darling (Asda spinmeister), in one of her earliest leters to the Journal, struggled to identify much in the way of local produce that Newton Abbot sold. I will try and look it up, though references to local meat and plastic bags seem to stand out in my memory, not least as Asda Newton Abbot didn't have a fresh meat counter, and plastic bags???

hi I have sent an email to Asda requesting their input on this debate.I would just like to say that I have no experience in town planning but I don't think it matters whether we come up with an alternative site suggestion as Asda are quite uniform in their design of building and its situation .They appear to prefer edge of town positioning

everytime someone asks them to join, the better and the sooner they will register and answer eveybodies questions.

In regards to a survey I saw, I beleive that Tesco was the Third most enviromentally friendly supermarket, Somerfields worst and Marks and Sparks the most enviromentally friendly. I think ASDA was one of the worst but I can not remeber that one for sure.