Supermarket giant Tesco will pay out a £20,000 ‘community fund’ to two Cambridgeshire towns affected by the grocer’s store cutbacks.
Chatteris was left with a 47,000 sq ft “ghost store” that Tesco no longer wants after it was named as one of the 49 developments boss Dave Lewis decided to shelve.
A second Cambridgeshire town, Whittlesey, was set to be the location for a new 36,000 sq ft store but this also has been scrapped as Lewis bids to slash costs.
The £20,000 is not being paid as compensation, but is being handed to Fenland council as part of the grocer’s usual community funding scheme, according to The Guardian.
But several similar payments are expected to be made to councils in other towns and cities affected by Lewis’s 43 store closures and 49 shelved developments.
The Guardian reports that Tesco are already in talks with two councils in Somerset over an £11m deal to buy a piece of land where plans for a new store have been axed.
Similar negotiations are also thought to be ongoing over a £10m deal for land in Banff, Aberdeenshire.
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