00:00Bags in hand, shopping lists written and the doors have opened to the newly refurbished
00:04supermarket in Tunbridge that cost £20 million.
00:08To celebrate the opening and help cut the ribbon was MP Tom Tugendhat and councillor
00:13Matt Borton, who quickly became the centre of attention when the doors officially opened.
00:17It's not every day you get the chance to walk around a brand new superstore, but after
00:22millions of pounds and years later, here it is.
00:24But what does it actually add to the community other than a bit of excitement?
00:28They're confident the store will encourage footfall into the town.
00:32If you look at the statistics, actually what happens is an anchor shop like this brings
00:37people in, sure people come in and they do their weekly shop here, but then they do smaller
00:41shops in other places.
00:43If you go and have a look at the butcher or Sankey's, the fishmonger, I hope they're going
00:49to do very well out of this too.
00:51What I want to see is I want to see Tunbridge growing, I want to see more investment, I
00:54want to see more opportunity.
00:55And what the council have done here is they've worked with Sainsbury's so that the Conservative
01:00Council has delivered the ability for Sainsbury's to do the investment and that means that we're
01:04then going to have more money to be able to invest in other things, not just car parks
01:07like here, but also public services that we all need.
01:11We've known for a number of years that small businesses on the high streets and the supermarkets
01:16here in Tunbridge can work together and that we can coexist.
01:19That is exactly what I expect will be able to happen here.
01:23We've got a thriving high street and one of the reasons that is because Sainsbury's is
01:28right next door to the high street.
01:29The two complements each other.
01:31We are just a few metres from the high street, we're just a very short walk to the station,
01:37we've got car parking on both sides of the store.
01:40We're accessible by foot, by public transport, by car, however you wish to get here.
01:45This really is super for the town and I'm delighted that Sainsbury's have been able to
01:49open today.
01:50But politics aside, what do shoppers think?
01:54Well, we usually kind of have a little walk around and pop into a coffee shop anyway,
01:58but yeah, I think it will bring a lot more business to the place, yeah.
02:03Yeah, there's loads of little shops that people probably discover that they never knew was here
02:06by coming here and having a little wander around.
02:08So over the past few weeks I've seen changes in the shop because they were like redoing different
02:14areas every time I come here so just glad to see like it's completed today and we do see
02:19the store got bigger and we got a lot more varieties.
02:23So will it actually encourage locals to use small businesses or will they simply check out?
02:28Kristin Hawthorne for KMTV, Tunbridge.
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