Store Wars.

Carnegie reads that Dalgety Bay will have a new ASDA store by "the spring" with Tesco reassuring the Bay's "great and the good" that it has no intentions of pulling out of DB.

"Colin McPhail, chairman of the community council, said, “Tesco have said they are committed to staying and what they want to look at is what improvements can be made within the existing shopping centre.” He added that company representatives had reassured residents that they would address any problems at the store, such as a perceived lack of selection and fresh veg. “They explained this by saying that they have a new distribution depot in Livingston and I think they have had a few teething problems but they’re going to sort it out,” he said. “It’s good news they’re going to stay in the town, it gives shoppers more choice.”

Carnegie thinks some people are being a bit naive if they really believe that Tesco will continue to compete with a much larger ASDA store in a market that is already saturated by Tesco itself, at the same time as it is sitting on a site in DB which is worth a small fortune if it was rezoned for housing development.

Even if Tesco only loses a few percentage points in turnover from its DB store it will be under pressure to cut its losses, and invest somewhere else. The only thing that will stop that will be if Fife Council doesn't rezone the current Tesco site, forcing it to maintain a shopping centre against its wishes, even perhaps minus a Tesco store. However, that argument might be difficult for Fife Council to sustain given that they have just massively increased the amount of retail floor space in the Bay by allowing the ASDA store to be built.

Oh and by the way, didn't the community council try and do some sort of sweetheart deal with Tesco themselves which involved the construction of new community facilities in exchange of a larger Tesco store? A proposal that was scuppered when the new store's planning application was approved.