SIR, — Why is it that despite two public consultations — the latest delivered to 15,000 houses in December — the best Tesco can do is to undertake yet another survey in St Albans city centre and still only find 36 per cent of people in favour of their lar

SIR, - Why is it that despite two public consultations - the latest delivered to 15,000 houses in December - the best Tesco can do is to undertake yet another survey in St Albans city centre and still only find 36 per cent of people in favour of their large superstore (the new "smaller" Tesco store is similar in size to St Albans Sainsbury's, 17 per cent larger than Morrison's and 83 per cent bigger than Waitrose).

The first Tesco-run consultation, which received 800 responses, showed a majority in opposition to the store (per the minutes from the meeting between Tesco and the district council on July 7, 2007). As Tesco have not chosen to publicise the results of their second consultation but rather conduct yet another survey, you can only conclude that once again the majority of responses opposed the store.

More than 5,000 people have signed the Stop Tesco petition against the store and as you pointed out, a survey showed 83 per cent of local businesses oppose the development. Furthermore, in the council's recent consultation on whether a supermarket should be built on the London Road site, 88 per cent of people objected to a supermarket on this site (Issues and Options Consultation of the St Albans Core Strategy Development Plan).

To cap it all the council have now sent the planning application back to Tesco as it is incomplete. You would have thought Tesco might have worked out how to fill in a planning application by now given the large number of new stores they open every year.

IAN LANGFORD,

Orient Close, St Albans.