Bath Press Site - 'Have Your Say'

[Rob Garner]

I've had a leaflet from St James Investments about three Public Exhibitions starting today (27th Nov), going through to Saturday. They say it's "for members of the local community to find out more about the issues and opportunities presented by the site, and tell us what they'd like to see on the site in the future"

They will answer any questions we will have.

If they own the site, how much say do we have though? I'd like to hear what others' think once they've been to one of these sessions.

[Rob Oldfield]

I was busy so didn't get the chance to go, but my girlfriend did. Her impression was that it was just a PR exercise - that they've already decided what they're going to do but want to give the impression of taking on board local opinion. Some points:

They do, of course, deny any links to Tesco.

St James's website seems curiously hard to find. I couldn't find it via Google. Girlfriend asked at the exhibition and was told that it was www.sjigroup.com (the trimedia representative was reluctant to give this out) which I can recommend if you want to buy some Malaysian furniture. I tried www.sjigroup.co.uk and that proved to be correct. That lists three current developments that they're working on. I'll leave it to the reader to guess how many of those feature Tesco but if you were to go for a number between two and four then you wouldn't be far out. It does seem very strange that the website of a company such as St James's is so inaccessible.

The corporate gibberish for 'a supermarket, possibly one that's an anagram of Toces' seems to be 'major anchor retailer'. I really don't see why we need one - surely D R Francis sell them already in a wide range of sizes and colour.

The exhibition is the first of three planning stages. The second will be 'workshops' to discuss the project. These will be made up of around 15 people but it was unclear about who those people will be. There is nothing on the feedback form from the exhibition about that - no tickbox to register interest in being involved in that stage. I will be phoning them tomorrow to see how one volunteers, and will post details of that once I have them. Stage 3 will be another exhibition and draft proposals.

Basically, out impression is that this 'consultation' exercise is a smokescreen to try to find out what other things - housing, health and fitness club, local theatre - would be most likely to persuade people not to complain about the Tesco.