In a recent issue of The Grocer magazine, you don't have to look far to read that Tesco opened a store in Portwood, Cheshire, which was much larger than the one granted permission for in its planning application.

The local authority there turned down its retrospective application, although it allowed Tesco to make a fresh application - to the disgust of local traders.

In Dartford, Tesco has applied to open a store with 490 flats above it. Although the scheme has been called in by John Prescott for review (partly because a new road is needed), it shows the Tesco in Church Road, Hove, missed a profitable opportunity by not doing something similar.

With underground parking, a brick building could have made for an interesting design, with graduated levels towards the church on the east side, and providing two or three levels of housing above a store which would not have been so garishly out of keeping with the rest of the area.

English Heritage cited Ludlow as an example but Brighton and Hove City Council blatantly ignored this.

Small wonder there was such an eruption over the subsequent proposal to do away with Hove Library. One shudders to think of the towering building which would have replaced it.

-Christopher Hawtree, Hove