CHANCELLOR Alistair Darling has joined the campaign to keep a Tesco store open in Edinburgh – by vowing to take it up with the supermarket giant's chief executive.
The Evening News told this week how the Tesco in Wester Hailes is closing down to make way for a new superstore at Hermiston Gait.
Campaigner Rena Linton, 63, telephoned the office of the Edinburgh South West MP to inform him of the closure of the
store on Dumbryden Road.
And she said she was stunned when the Chancellor wrote back saying that he will write to the chief executive of Tesco, Terry Leahy, to help the cause.
The grandmother-of-two girls, of Drumbryden Gardens, has been gathering a petition to keep the Tesco store open, which has been signed by almost 300 people. She aims to send them down to Tesco's headquarters.
The cleaner said: "I'm going to send them to London with a letter saying how angry I am.
"People don't want to be going to a big shop out in Hermiston. I can walk to Hermiston Gait but you can't carry shopping back. It's the vulnerable people, it's the elderly that will suffer. Do they want Wester Hailes to be left as a ghost town? I'm so angry at Tesco."
No-one from Mr Darling's office was available for comment, but Sighthill/Gorgie Councillor Donald Wilson said: "I think it's an essential local amenity. It will be a disastrous loss to the area. I was really concerned when I heard.
"I think the more support we get the better. Obviously there are other kinds of shops but there is nothing in the way of a supermarket which serves the local area."
Tesco says that the Wester Hailes store is closing because of financial difficulties, and that there is no connection between the closure of the Dumbryden Road store and the opening of a new store, which will be located in the old Homebase premises at Hermiston Gait. Homebase closed after B&Q moved to the area following a refused planning bid to extend its Longstone store.
Tesco employees from the Wester Hailes store have been notified and those who wish to stay with the company have been invited to take part in a programme to find a job match at another store.
A bus route to Hermiston Gait does run along Calder Road but many residents say they will have to take two bus journeys to get there. Another petition circulating in the area has already gathered 200 names.
The full article contains 429 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
