ACS Blog

We’re asking for your help in completing our National Living Wage survey and I hope and expect we’ll get a strong response from retailers because it’s the biggest financial issue facing our sector.  How do we cope with our biggest cost rising by over 4% per year, above inflation and the growth rates in this (and pretty much any) sector?  We really need to hear from you about the impact on your business.

At the start of April, the rates retailers must pay their colleagues went up, specifically to £7.83 for those aged 25 or above, and £7.38 for those between 21 and 24.  The comprehensive list of rate changes is here so make sure you're paying at or above these rates.  

This has been a big week for ACS, launching our crime report, which has attracted lots of interest from within the trade and in wider public debate including: The Times, The Telegraph, Daily Star and

There's been a lot of debate recently about the sale of energy drinks to children.  It's interesting to see the dynamics of this issue: Jamie Oliver, buoyed by his success in persuading the government to introduce a levy on sugary drinks, has now turned his sights directly to the retailers who sell high caffeine drinks.  How do you, as a retailer, and we, as a trade body, respond to such a campaign?

We had a really great day in Cardiff last week, launching the Welsh Local Shop Report which gives all the facts and figures on the contribution that our members make to communities and the economy in Wales.  It’s a really positive story: more store per head than any other part of the UK, 25,000 jobs, £49m of investment, and a higher proportion of that going into providing essential services like post offices and free-to-use ATMs.

Two things I was involved with last week revealed a surprising connection.  One was the launch of the ACS Rural Shop Report, and the other was a chat with Henry Armour, my counterpart at NACS in the USA, who was over here looking at some stores.  Bear with me while I explain how these things are linked.

It’s been a big start to the year for plastic. Last week Theresa May’s speech on a long-term plan for the environment was heavily focused on how to cut back the use of plastic, and particularly to reduce plastic in the oceans. Now Iceland (the retailer, not the country in the North Atlantic, although maybe they will also be doing this at some point soon) has pledged to end plastic packaging on their own-brand products by 2023. Given that many of the products that you, as a convenience retailer, will stock are packaged in plastic, what does this mean for you?

You will I’m sure have been as shocked and appalled as me, our team here, and our members at the death of Vijay Patel, a retailer in Mill Hill, north London. First, the facts as we know them: late on Saturday night three teenagers tried to buy age restricted products, Mr Patel and a member of his team correctly refused the sale, and in response they were attacked. Mr Patel died as a result of the injuries he sustained, his colleague’s injuries are not life threatening.

You may have seen and heard ACS in the media over Christmas talking about some changes to the way the police and courts and government are responding to shop theft. There are a couple of separate issues at play here, and this is what they mean for you.

One of the fun if slightly surreal parts of my job is responding to members and others asking me to forecast what’s going to happen next in politics.  Such forecasts are always a bit of guesswork, and the best anyone can really do is analyse the factors at play and come up with some sort of rationale for what might happen next.  I also have a rule that if you want to know what’s likely to happen in an election, listen to the person least connected with the Westminster village where rumours and granular message crafting and media spin cloud the fundamentals of how people in the country at la