On my deadline day for filing this column the unhappy news breaks that ASDA is not proceeding with it’s plans to build a superstore in Dover and consequently, one of the main drivers of the town’s regeneration plans is no longer in place and the Dover Town Investment Zone scheme seems in jeopardy.

Dover District Council and the supermarket company announced the news by issuing a joint statement. “ASDA WITHDRAW FROM DOVER DEVELOPMENT” read the headline and then followed, in somewhat muted tones, expressions of disappointment from both parties. The statement said that ASDA had chosen to withdraw having decided that their part in the scheme was no longer commercially viable.

My feelings weren’t muted, far from it, I was angry. The Council’s discussions with ASDA started six years ago and here they were, in the month that we all expected them to sign-off the contracts, pulling out and possibly writing-off the project.

Despite the obvious party political differences between Dover District Council and me – I’ve been supportive of the regeneration scheme and I’ve been pleased to assist by helping to progress the scheme when the market gap needed bridging and the project was in danger of faltering.

During all that time the briefings I’ve received from DDC have been positive and everyone I talked to at the Council expressed their confidence that all the obstacles would be overcome and ASDA would sign on the dotted line – so what went wrong ?

Some people say that while ASDA have taken six years and still not laid a brick – Morrison’s moved from ‘expressions of interest’ to ‘store opening’ in not much more than six months. It’s true that they moved into an existing building complete with access and car parks etc but their store has attracted lots of new customers and everyone speaks highly about their standard of service.

So perhaps ASDA’s remarks about loss of commercial viability might be another way of saying that Morrison’s have moved into their market I thought, but it seems not.

Shortly after the announcement, ASDA’s Property Manager, Tom McGarry phoned to tell me that his company was pretty hacked off with some of the comments coming out of Dover District Council and he wanted to put the record straight.

I explained to him that as a Labour Member of Parliament I didn’t carry any banners for Dover’s Conservative controlled Council but I’d never had reason to doubt the veracity of the private briefings they’d supplied me over the years. But he painted a very different picture to that described by the Council. Mr McGarry criticised the way DDC had spent so many years without reaching agreement on design parameters, land acquisition and car parking allocations, and he questioned whether the massive amount of money they’d paid to expensive lawyers and consultants was money well spent.

I’m still confident that DTIZ will eventually be successfully developed but in the meantime I’m looking forward to meeting with ASDA and DDC to see what really went wrong in this expensive six years saga.

© Hawkinge Gazette and Channel Coast News 2010