ACS Blog

Since the start of the Covid crisis my colleagues and I at ACS have not just been working to help members to deal with the immediate challenges they’ve been facing, we’ve also been leading a discussion about what we can all learn from this experience. Which of the behaviours we’ve seen over this period will last, which are specific to this time? What would we do differently if we had our time again or if the same issues emerged again?

I’m not the first person to note that the Covid-19 crisis has shaken up politics. After the December 2019 election, we were expecting to be dealing with a government populated by libertarians and putting great faith in the free market and personal responsibility. The one thing we didn’t expect Boris Johnson to be accused of was operating a nanny state, but that’s exactly the charge being levelled by some now.

Few issues divide the retail industry and fire up an emotional response like Sunday trading.

Some see any restrictions on trading hours as fundamentally at odds with a free market, others think it’s outrageous that we allow any retailing at all on a Sunday.

I respect both of those views, but I find myself aligned – personally and on behalf of the convenience stores I represent – with the majority of the public who, time after time, tell us that they support the current compromise of allowing six consecutive opening hours on a Sunday.

I’m not sure when we’ll be able to look back and reflect objectively on this extraordinary period in our lives and in the history of the world, the country and our sector. Certainly now – ten weeks on from when Coronavirus truly hit our sector – is far too soon. But we can reflect on what we’ve learned in this time, and I think that times like this reveal more about who we are and the purpose we serve.

We were absolutely devastated to hear the the news about the passing of Raj Aggarwal. Raj was an independent retailer, a fixture at ACS’ and other industry events, a member of our independents board, a great entrepreneur, and most importantly a devoted family man.

I doubt many retailers are going to have time to read a blog from me today, but I wanted to thank the tens of thousands of retailers and the hundreds of thousands of colleagues in local shops who are doing such an amazing job for their communities.

This episode has again brought home the value local shops bring to their communities, and even though I know and expect this, I have been blown away and humbled by all the examples of retailers stepping up for elderly and vulnerable customers in particular.

Perhaps the most compelling narrative from the 2019 election was of people living outside of big cities and the South East, conveying a sense of chronic under-investment in the fabric of their towns, villages, estates and neighbourhoods. If Britain’s future after leaving the EU is going to be built from these communities up,  pretty good place to start is with the businesses that have kept on serving these places where others have left.

The government has published its proposals for a post-Brexit immigration system, and I’ve seen friends from related industries, not least UK Hospitality, making the case for why these proposals aren’t going to work for that sector.

This week we launched a major new campaign to create 25,000 new Dementia Friends in our sector. You’ll see lots of information about the campaign on our website and on social media, and if you have any questions call me or anyone from the ACS team and we’ll make sure you have everything you need to become a Dementia Friend and to help your colleagues to do the same.

I’m writing this on New Years Eve against the backdrop of two important stories for our sector. Firstly, we planned to use today to publicise our concerns about recent reductions in the LINK interchange fee that funds free to use ATMs, and to argue for future increases to be scrapped. LINK really needs to reverse the 10% reductions they’ve already made, which have led to lots of our members seeing their free to use cash machine apply charges, or be lost altogether.