Letter: Our Small Local Businesses Need Support Not Bureaucracy

Published on: 1 Oct, 2013
Updated on: 1 Oct, 2013

From Bernard Parke

Hon Alderman

Many small shops and business find life difficult to merely exist these days, none so much as the small shops in the outlying areas of our borough.

So I was more than a little surprised to be told that a newly formed enterprise in Onslow Village that made a modest request to open occasionally for evening trade was asked, by our council, for the sum of £200 before the request would be considered.

Molly’s in Onslow Village

This does not seem to be an isolated case.  A take-away food shop nearby, which has been trading since the seventies, was asked by our council to prove that they had been trading for a year.

Surely these small family businesses are the life blood of the areas in which they serve.

Why then should they be put to such put in what would appear to be pure bureaucracy?

I put this question to our council and to date I have not even received an acknowledgement.

The silence could be said to be deafening!

A small business said to be ‘the lifeblood of the area.’

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