Skip to main content

Sunday trading consultation: fair or fixed? You decide.

My local council, South Oxfordshire, asked me to complete a survey on Sunday trading as a local resident. The deadline is next week.
The first question was about the current arrangements and what I thought. There were five options:
  • large shops shouldn’t open
  • six hours is already too long
  • current restrictions are about right
  • large shops should be allowed open for longer
  • no restrictions.

My answer was the current restrictions are about right.
The next question was about what would happen if the council allowed large stores to open for longer. The menu included 10 options and a space for other.
The options were that it would:
  • encourage me to shop more in my local town
  • give me more flexibility
  • impact on my religious or cultural beliefs
  • have a positive impact on my business
  • have a negative impact on my business
  • increase footfall to my business
  • reduce footfall to my business
  • provide more employment opportunities open to me in the local area
  • mean that I need to work longer hours
  • and/or no impact.

Under other impact I wrote: “I think it would harm village stores and village cultural events on Sundays. The current arrangements seem to work fine and as they are not broken do not need fixing."
They next asked how I described myself. My answer was individual. The other options were business representative, charity, large business, medium business, small business, micro business, religious organisation, trade union or other.
Finally they asked where I lived. The options were: Abingdon; Botley; Didcot; Faringdon; Henley; Thame; Wallingford; Wantage and Grove; other South Oxfordshire; and other Vale of White Horse. I picked the second from last option.

I look forward to seeing what my local councils make of this feedback. The survey seems fair. Multiple answers to the second question are bound to cause confusion. A summary of the consultation will be made available on the council's web site. I will have to remember to look out for it.
In the covering letter, Phillip Vincent, the corporate consultation officer (yes, they have one of those), promised: "We will use this information to inform the councils' response to government and decide whether to extend Sunday trading hours in the future, should we be granted powers to do this."
Earlier he said: "New proposals are being made by government which would give local councils the flexibility to decide what times shops can open on Sundays. The expectation is that opening hours would be extended in most places."
That second sentence is interesting. While the council wants to consult local people on what they think, it seems all too willing to work to the government's "expectation". What do you think? 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Busy street, empty shop, missed profits

True in part to my New Year resolution, I held a business meeting in an independent coffee shop today just next door to a Starbucks. The cafe was presented well and four staff were busy preparing for the lunchtime rush, at 11am. As my guests were late, I had a half hour overview of footfall on the street outside and in the restaurant. Six customers. Barely enough to form the queue in Starbucks or Pret-a-Manger just down the road. Plus one Italian girl who dropped off her CV. Some people stopped to look at the posters in the window and moved on. The owners seemed quite happy. When I left just after 1215, they were doing brisk trade. However, I have the impression that the business is not working hard enough. It could easily have managed 120 customers between 11 and 12, instead of 12. This is lost profit as the fixed overheads and staff costs are already in place. The owners are clearly busy - perhaps too busy to take time to look at the potential that their cafe has. What shou...
2 comments
Read more

Think before you delist your slowest seller

Retailers need to introduce new products to provide their shoppers with "good news" and to generate interest. But for each new product that you introduce you need to consider delisting an existing line. Easy, you might think. I will just print out the list of products in the category and take off the one with the lowest sales. However, if you do this research from the US suggest you might be wrong. What you need to consider is what sort of demand you have for each product, a white paper by Demand Tec, a US specialist software provider shows. It says that there are two kinds of sales: incremental sales, when products add to the total shopper spend and are not readily substituted by another item transferable sales, where shoppers find an alternative easily when it is not available. Using its software, it shows a category with 50 products from top seller to bottom seller. At the same time it also measures the incremental sales each product provides. The number 50 in ove...
1 comment
Read more

Sticks and stones do hurt

My 17 year-old son returned from a rock festival this week wearing a wristband proudly declaring him 0ver 18. He explained how easy it had been to use someone else's ID to get the identification and said it was ironic that he had not needed to show the over 18 band when buying alcohol. Today, Scottish retailer Abdul Qadar is complaining that public authorities are asking people to lie about their age when making test purchases. What trading standards officers may be forgetting is that the fact that retailers invest in a business premises and trade consistently from it make their job much, much easier. The alternative, a world of markets and itinerant traders, will be far harder to police. Mr Qadar's sense of injustice is fair. Those retailers, like Mr Qadar, who value their investment will seek to trade legally and will not sell alcohol to people under the age of 18. Asking children to lie about their age to local traders is a slander on all retailers.
2 comments
Read more