Letter: UK-wide Review Needed On Rates For Independent Shops

Published on: 6 Jun, 2018
Updated on: 6 Jun, 2018

From Cllr James Walsh (Labour, Stoke ward)

As a regular customer, I can vouch for Ben’s Collector’s Records being everything a good independent shop should be – friendly, knowledgeable service, with great prices and a great vibe when you’re browsing. The only criticism I have is that my wallet is regularly drained when I “just pop in”.

See: Frustrated Independent Trader Told No Reduction In Business Rates Available Over Tunsgate Revamp Delays

While the revamped Tunsgate will look great once complete, work on the road has taken far too long and has had a negative impact on the kind of shops that make Guildford town centre the unique place it is – the small independents lining one side of Tunsgate that are an integral part of the community.

Long after the likes of Mothercare and Argos have come and gone, it’s the “Ben’s Collector’s Records” and “Cry for the Moons” of the town that remain and give Guildford its reputation as somewhere you can go for something different.

I completely support the traders’ call for reduced rates to partly compensate for the lost business they’ve suffered as a result of the seemingly endless works on the road.

I would go a step further and suggest that rates for independent shops across the UK need to be looked at as a whole – high cost and high rates are strangling our town centres, which are already being hit by online shopping and a radical change in shopping habits.

While there may be little we can do locally about the rates, we do need to think about the future of Guildford town centre and the council’s plans for the North Street development. Are more high street chains and gimmicky restaurants really the answer? Or is it time to innovate and do something different?

Whichever way it goes, our independents have to be a key part of it. Otherwise, Guildford will become another McBland town like Woking, Reading or Staines – and none of us want that.

Responses to Letter: UK-wide Review Needed On Rates For Independent Shops

John Perkins Reply

June 7, 2018 at 10:10 am

There was a time when councils looked on residents and businesses as their masters to whom they provided a service. Later they persuaded themselves they were a business and their former masters became customers. Now they seem to regard those who pay for them as mere fodder.

Thus, they’ve moved through three of the varieties of symbiosis: from mutualism through commensalism to parasitism.

To continue the move might lead to a form of amensalism, where the parasite kills the host (with an obvious consequence for the parasite).

Of course, it could simply be that they’re not competent to do adequately what they once did reasonably well.