I object to Costa Clarkston on the basis of keep trade local and independent. We have the opportunity to support individual family businesses, pay local people's wages and feed the local system by keeping international companies out. This goes against the grain of community empowerment and development!

We don't need a corporate behemoth with sub standard coffee in the area when we have gems like Cafe Roma, Dandy's Deli, Eat Deli and Something serving excellent coffee alongside imaginative menus and hard to find produce. If Costa kills any of those local businesses it will be a travesty.

The only way Clarkston can ever flourish is if enough independent businesses exist to make it a destination. Costa will come at the expense of several local indies, and nobody in human history has ever travelled to get a Costa coffee. You're trading a community for nothing.

Clarkston is srill a diverse small town with lots of good small restraunts and coffee shops adding a costa to the main streeet will only put more pressure on the small shops in the area ONE costa opens and 3 to 4 shops close down leaving more holes in the walls with no prospect of re-opening I Have seen this happen so many times across scotland towns as I travel. SAY NO TO A COSTA

Enough is enough in Clarkston, many local places without this happening, please think that yes Costa may bring in 12 new jobs but with this they will undoubtedly make 3 times that unemployed in closures.

I firmly believe that a Costa on Clarkston high Street will result in a negative impact on the surrounding food businesses already in place. Add in the already difficult parking situation around Clarkston and one or more existing businesses will inevitably suffer or even close. I do not want Clarkston to become another coffeeshop chain victim.

We should support local individual business

Let's support our great local small businesses and this means a resounding NO to Costa and other chains.