Sir – It was with disappointment that I learned that Tesco bought the Cereal Partners site. My thoughts were immediately of the impact that a large store on that site would have on the town. There has been a Sainsbury in the town centre for all the

Sir - It was with disappointment that I learned that Tesco bought the Cereal Partners site. My thoughts were immediately of the impact that a large store on that site would have on the town.

There has been a Sainsbury in the town centre for all the 30-plus years that I have been in the area and they are helping our town by staying in its core. Their new development proposals may not be to the liking of everyone but they are supporting our community by putting their new store in the heart of the city.

The Howard Centre almost struck a blow to the town centre shops when so many empty units were created by the migration into it. Fortunately, the charity shops and the new vogue for expensive coffee filled many of those voids.

I feel that many of the smaller independent traders in the town would suffer badly should trade be attracted away (by Tesco) from the town centre on to the "other side of the tracks". These are the shops that make the town special and different to other towns.

Would visitors to a new Tesco bother to walk across the bridge to the town centre? Have a look at Royston and see what impact their slightly out of town Tesco has had upon that town centre. It is now almost a ghost town and certainly very run down.

It is very good that a new swimming pool is planned but the cynical side of me wonders if it will ever appear. Remember what we were promised when the Galleria was first being discussed - a skating rink, a bowling alley - what happened to them? The cynical side also wonders if the offer of new homes will try to sway some to thinking that it provides the solution to the housing problems that the area is facing.

Somebody has clearly done their homework to consider what the people in WGC need and by including a swimming pool and housing project hope to win us over to letting them have a supermarket.

Now, if Tesco had been really clever, there is one project that they could have funded and would have won universal support from the people of WGC and its immediate surroundings... a bold venture that nobody would have expected of Tesco: build us a new hospital on the site!

Alan Willision, Westcott, WGC.