Dear Mr Sainsbury

A recent Town Community Poll gave all the electorate the opportunity to voice their opinion on the Sainsbury proposal and the majority were in favour.

The fact that the turn out was very low is in the hands of the electorate so the first question that I would ask any dissenter is, did you vote? If not why not?

Bring your Sainsbury store to Whitby and include a petrol station please and keep the prices down!

This will reduce the travelling of Whitby people to Scarborough, Redcar and York, offer welcome employment and reduce the carbon footprint.

Tourists will always make their special purchases in the Town so the traders should have no fears. They will never be able to buy that special and unique painting or craft in Sainsbury.

We know that your meat, will probably be varied, but our local butchers need have no fear providing they continue to deliver their high class specialities and good service. And as for fish and chips, we know that tourists don't come to Whitby to consume processed food from a supermarket.

We embrace the Sainsbury idea and are confident that the Craft and Art in Whitby is not the sort of merchantise that you would be able to retail in your store.

Sainsbury's, you are welcome in Whitby, why have you taken so long? And tourists, the parking problems will come right in the end.

Footnote: WTC you have done us proud.

Competition for Somerfield and Coop is a good thing except that I do not shop in either, parking, location, prices etc. but be fair the Coop delivery service is good.

I travel to Scarborough and Guisborough and give those community my hard earned cash - either Sainsbury or Morrison.

Whitby Lidl also gets visited, especially for their vegetables.

Sainsbury you are welcome providing you offer a similiar standard to your other large stores, and lets have a petrol station as well to break the Whitby monopoly. Competition is a good thing.

Ensure that a good percentage of employment is local; maybe the malingerers can be pursuaded to do an honest days work, [Fred collect all of those sticks] and everything should be hunkydory.

Whitby needs this sort of Super Store, the Community Poll supported it and as far as my family are concerned you are welcome.

Giz a job mister!

Nathan I think you mean Merchandise and Hunmanby, similar and persuaded.

I agree with both of the above comments!

Although I support the concept of an out of town supermarket, I would urge Sainsbury to adopt a social conscience similar to the Coop. They support local charities, Air Ambulance,Lifeboat,Cancer and Rotary etc,etc, and engage with those groups to promote community issues.

Providing an alternative shopping facility is welcome; becoming part of a community takes a little longer.

I don't need a supermarket to act as my conscience or tell me what to think. I want it to sell good quality goods at reasonable prices without adding a "Whitby Premium" to all its prices. Most of all I want it to sell petrol and diesel at the same prices as Scarborough or Teesside not an extra 3p per litre. If Sainsbury's don't sell fuel I'm sure many of us will travel to Scarborough and Teesside to do our main shopping at supermarkets there and get cheaper fuel at tthe same time. Without a filling station Sainsbury's will lose out to the Coop as it is in a town centre location handy for the specialist shops. Sainsbury's say there is no room on that site for a filling station. I have suggested to them that they could make room by reducing the number of parking spaces, not having a customer restaurant or a recycling area (The council recycling area is just round the corner)

Sainsbury's - if you're planning a store without a petrol station then forget it....... we more than cover the cost of taking the car to Scarborough by filling it up with petrol that is cheaper than in whitby. If you are short of space then make your store the same size as Scarborough, so away with the restaurant which we don't need, and use the space to accommodate petrol pumps, because without them you're batting on a sticky wicket, we'll continue to go to other towns and have a day out into the bargain.
Whitby needs the competition of a big name, and on the outskirts of whitby, as Lidl has shown, at times on a Saturday there are more people in Lidl than in the co-op, even though there are many more cars in the co-op carpark, and we can all guess who they belong to at this time of year, it certainly isn't the local customers. We'll still be able to use the post office at the co-op, and the mini-bank thanks to the 30 minutes free parking, unless of course this is withdrawn. Why has the co-op done away with the bakery? To provide a cafe to entice the tourists in, they're already using the toilets in there so the thinking must be that they'll get something back from them, I can't see many locals wanting to sit in the cafe, can you?

I am looking forward to having Sainsbury's in Whitby and welcome them. We have been rather forced to shop at the Co-op (expensive and difficult as in busy town centre) or Lidl (cheap but sadly lacking in much variety). The other smaller stores are what they are - small. The other option to be drive miles out of town to Scarborough or Middlesbrough. The site at Stainsacre is ideal - I'm quite happy to get my DIY needs at Homebase and then the weekly shop in Sainsbury's thus avoiding the horrendous town centre in summer. We tend to only go "down town" to quickly get or do what we need then go home to get away from the queues/crush/parking nightmare/visitors with their attitude of "I can do/go/say what I like as my money is more important in your town than you are". To have an out of town store means I can avoid this to some degree - and also leave my shopping till later in the day (as Homebase is also open till 8pm) and thus be able to park when I get home.