The meeting heard from a wide variety of local residents, traders and city and county coucillors. Not a single word was spoken in favour of Tesco setting up shop in Romsey.

The meeting heard from Chris Hull who has spent a good part of the last three years fighting off Tesco's planns to set up in Unthank Road in Norwich -  http://www.fielgarvie.co.uk/sut/index.html Chris raised many interesting points about the impact of a Tesco store on people who have the misfortune of living or working near it. Despite claims from the supermarket giant that they want to co-exist in harmony with local businesses, the reality is that only 3-4% of people shopping at Tescos will then go on to visit other shops in the local area. He also spoke about their "just-in-time" policy which means shelves are re-filled as soon as stock levels get low which results in a very frequent delivery schedule - in other words, lots of large lorries blocking the already congested Mill Road and it's surrounding narrow streets.

The meeting went on to hear from lots of people who had pleanty to say about why they didn't want Tesco here and also what they planned to do about it. It was agreed that given the tight deadlines on the planning applications -  http://tinyurl.com/325nef -  http://tinyurl.com/yt8so4 -  http://tinyurl.com/35ndvj - it was important to focus on that for now. But people were full of interesting and creative ideas for carrying on the campaign if the planning route proves unproductive.

The meeting raised over £400 to get a fighting fund off the ground and the chair invited people who were interested in co-ordinating the campaign from here on in to give their contact details - over 30 people did so. Within hours a website was set up at  http://www.nomillroadtesco.org/ and email lists were ready to keep the 199 people who left email addresses informed of future plans. If you're not on the email list yet, go here to sign up  http://www.nomillroadtesco.org/lists/

Email the campaign here info (AT) nomillroadtesco.org