eric:

What happened to real shops was that many large groups went bust, like Arcadia Group whose dodgy financial practices took out Burtons, Dorothy Perkins, BHS and Topshop. Add to that Woolworths and you've got half the empty space in the town centre. Then there was the obviously pointless number of shoe shops and greeting card shops which filled in a lot of the gaps. Plus the banks (who had funded the bad credit of the dodgy retailers) and building societies who were forced into mergers to survive. M&S moved to the GJRP because their building needed to much maintenace work, and now they are also in trouble and cutting back on normal retail. The bottom line is that britain may have been a nation of shop keepers but they weren't very good at it - and the public have got used to shopping online. Those that can't accept reality have dreams of new, nice looking shops coming along but it isn't going to happen. As for how many fast food outlets will there be, the answer is probably not as many as have been announced. If the people who were written about last week are paying attention they will be having second thoughts. And we won't be walking through discarded wrappings because not much is being sold. Just remind me, what new commercial properties in Queensway did you have in mind, because the plans for the bus station side were dropped a long time ago.

How many fast food outlets will there be now in the town after this one opens? Is this the best that the town can do? What happened to the real shops? It's becoming an embarrassment. It won't be long before we'll be wading through the town centre up to our waists in discarded wrappings. I shudder to think about who is going to occupy the new commercial properties in Queensway.

Only 6 days ago we had the story about some clown hoping to get change of use permission for a shop a few doors down, and I commented about just how much homework these people have done regarding the overcrowded fast food market in Crewe. This place presumably doesn't need change of use since Costa had already done it, it just needed refitting, so it will be them and the underworked Betsy's. Any more spending on commercially unviable businesses might attract the attention of the National Economic Crime Centre who are still smarting about the BBC embarrasing them by doing a better investigation into dodgy shops in Crewe.