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The HISTORY of REDDITCH New Town

The Changing Vision - Out of Town Shopping …..

The early vision was of a single town centre and
main shopping area with local convenience stores
in residential district centres. This was what was
delivered by the Development Corporation.
However, in the 1980s and 1990s there was a
shopping revolution and “Retail Parks” and
“Superstores” became very popular.

Redditch was no exception and soon we had a rush
of these and now they are all over the town.
For the big supermarkets this was seen as the
growth areas and there were a series of
applications to develop non-town centre sites,
eventually resulting in the two main supermarkets
in the Kingfisher Centre moving out. Tescos tried
to appease public opinion and for a while kept their
town centre store as well as the superstore in
Oakenshaw but finally they focused on just the one
superstore. By the 21st century the four big
supermarkets realised that single superstores were
not the only solution and they have moved into
local “convenience” stores and many local
independents are now competing against these as
well.
Today there are calls to attract a large
Supermarket back to the town centre, but the
latest hope, ASDA, has opted for a non-town centre

Some of the headlines on out-of-town
shopping.

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