With a new Tesco store seemingly on the way, the much-loved Lewes Road Community Garden has finally met its end.

The gardeners say they are devastated, even though they knew this day would come.

But it’s not so much the leaving that grinds, more the proposed replacement.

Sean Duffield is from the Say No To Tesco on the Lewes Road campaign. He says: “It is a needless, unimaginative and soulless development which will only take from the community, sapping local sustainability and causing small businesses to go under while adding to pollution in an area that has already been identified as a pollution hotspot.”

The campaign claim these views are echoed citywide as the march of supermarkets on Brighton and Hove now means that on one mile-long stretch alone, from Western Road in Brighton to Church Road in Hove, there are two Tescos, two Sainsbury’s and one Waitrose. Tesco has 11 stores in the city and two more set to open.

Despite a number of councillors, including leader of Brighton and Hove City Council Mary Mears, coming out against the ever-increasing numbers of supermarkets, they are all but powerless to stop them.

In the 1980s, the general perception was too many supermarkets were being built out of town, taking custom away from the main shopping areas and causing dereliction. Since 1993, planning policy has insisted supermarkets are built in town centres wherever possible.

Carl Dyer is a specialist in planning law at Sussex law firm Thomas Eggar. He says: “You don’t have to show need if you’re in a designated town centre. Western Road is plainly a major shopping street and it’s not for the council to say ‘We’d prefer a clothes shop to a supermarket’.”

Carl points out that UK-wide employment in retail has risen 60% since the rise of the supermarket and argues that a free market dictates only the best stores selling the cheapest food stay open. A spokesperson for Sainsbury’s says that by opening more stores they are giving “local people more choice as to where they shop”, and about Tesco a press officer insists: “Because Express is a very small shop it normally trades alongside other small retailers to provide more choice for local people and an attractive place to shop.”

But across the city critics say the area becomes little more than a bland clone town, with genuine choice removed as independent stores close and aggressive developers allowed to dictate what goods and services a community can access.

Sean says: “We’ve managed to get more than 4,000 residents to sign both written and online petitions and have more than 912 objections to the [Lewes Road] site. We have managed to gather support from local MPs and councillors of all parties, and bring up other issues of outdated and unfair planning laws and corporate dominance. We’d rather see something for the community, involving the community and their ideas, something which the community actually democratically voted for.”