AS LOYAL and frequent customers of the Stourport Co-op for the last sixteen years, we have found the changes taking place there over the last few months bewildering and we’re not referring to the almost daily, random relocating of every comestible and beverages, during the refit.

This, we understand is probably unavoidable and we have learned to live with it.

Why though, was the pretty shrubbery, featuring a mature and lovely Californian Lilac, near the entrance, ripped out and destroyed? In its place there is now, a scruffy, litter strewn patch of bark shreds on a torn, shabby horticultural membrane. How is this an improvement? What purpose has been served by this pointless vandalism?

The removal of the attractive flower stall in the foyer has seemed counterproductive.

How we miss the welcoming, friendly greetings of Dan and Karen and the buzz and chatter of happy customers buying their colourful bouquets. It feels empty, dead and cold entering the store now (the display of barbecue briquettes now occupying the space not withstanding).

The one change we thought we understood, was moving the cafe from the rear to the front of the store.

A more pleasant outlook for customers, right? Seating with a view of the two lovely flowering cherry trees, yes? No!

They have chopped them down, God help us. The pitiful, butchered stumps of those charming little trees protrude now from yet another squalid display of assorted litter and rubbish (which the trees had gamely helped to screen from view). Who comes up with these mean, miserable, heartless acts of desecration, masquerading as ‘improvements’?

And why does the council permit them? There have been so many changes which have been made us reluctantly bid farewell to our ‘old’ Co-op. This last, callously brutal one, very sadly means, it is farewell to the new Co-op too.

Caroline and Peter Male

Stourport