COULD it be that the message isn't getting through in Haxby?

Despite decades of campaigns on the importance of contraception, a shock report says the York suburb's branch of Safeway sells the fewest number of condoms of any of its stores nationwide.

Apparently, the store sells about 40 times fewer sheaths in Haxby than at its most successful purveyor of preventatives, which is in Wimbledon.

The store compiled a top ten and a bottom ten using its sales figures over the past four weeks, and if the statistics are to be taken seriously, safe sex is not top of the agenda in Haxby.

A Safeway spokesman said: "Just because Haxby came bottom doesn't mean that people there don't lead an exciting life. It may just be that there are more exciting things to do.

"Or perhaps people are just too busy or too stressed about work to think about anything else."

Harry Briggs, City of York councillor for Haxby, said: "Maybe people in Haxby have got more brains, after all there's more than one way to skin a cat.

"It's the young people who are the ones that tend to have more partners, and the older ones, you could argue, who are more sensible and more solid and don't have so many partners, so provided they are using some other method of contraception, they do not need condoms.

"We have a higher percentage of older people in Haxby than in many other areas around York."

Coun Briggs said the lack of condom-buying has not boosted the birth rate. He said: "We have just closed Oaken Grove Primary School for lack of entrants, but some of the school where people are going are flourishing, so it might just be that there's a shift of population."

The small Safeway store stocks two popular brands of condom, which it displays on its toiletries and medicines shelf. There are two chemists in the village and the local pubs also have condom machines in their toilets.

A spokeswoman for the Safeway store said: "This is a very small store in the middle of a village.

"The majority of our customers are from the ageing population and I don't think they are going to have the need for them.

"We have got young families, but they tend to use us more as a corner shop and they go to the outlying trade parks to do their shopping."

Tony Broadhead, manager of The Tiger Inn, The Village, Haxby, said: "Maybe people are watching too much telly. Our condom machine is not very popular and I don't know why that is, especially as there are a lot of teenagers around here. I'm surprised."

Across town, in the Acomb branch of Safeway, a spokeswoman said that condoms do sell regularly and are stocked on the shelf and at the checkouts.

She said: "It's not a great seller, but we do get a delivery once a week so somebody must be buying them."

Updated: 11:40 Wednesday, September 04, 2002