ACS Blog

Last week I was – along with about 70 retailers and suppliers – in Dublin looking at the much-heralded convenience store market in Ireland.  We saw loads of great stores, but the thing that stood out more than anything else was the outstanding food to go offer in pretty much every site we visited. 

New figures out today from ONS and the NHS have shown that there’s been real progress made by retailers in reducing the sale of restricted products like cigarettes to young people. This is something that the sector should be proud of - in the past there has been a stigma surrounding convenience stores that suggested that they were a haven for young people buying alcohol and tobacco, but this is far from the truth. 

I’m really buzzing after a great hustings event today run by ACS with our friends at the Federation of Small Businesses.  After a general election campaign that has often seen politicians lurching from loudhailer sloganeering to robotic repetition of focus group-tested messages, with some pretty poor TV debates thrown in, today’s event saw my faith restored in good quality, substantive debate on the issues that matter to small shops, small businesses, and the communities we all serve.

In recent weeks, the Chancellor has come under fire from all sides over the impact of the business rates revaluation, with many claiming that the impact on their businesses could be catastrophic. In the convenience sector, as with many others, the reality is that there will be both winners and losers when the new rates take effect in April.

There’s plenty of discussion in the media about business rates policy, with most retail and wider business groups agreeing there needs to be a change to the way rates are calculated and collected (see businesses organisations agreed position here). But what specifics should we expect, or hope for, when the Chancellor stands up on Wednesday?

Well, that went well.  Not many organisations can put defeating the government on their CV, but after yesterday’s Commons vote against devolving Sunday trading laws, ACS, Usdaw and the rest of the Keep Sunday Special campaign can claim this rare distinction.  There will be plenty of time to reflect on the details of the campaign, and plenty of people to thank for their contribution, but I wanted to write about the role that individual retailers can play in making real change in politics.

Today’s publication of the government’s response to their public consultation is a chance to see their analysis all the evidence that has been put forward by groups like us, and also those who favour longer Sunday opening hours.  There’s a team in the Department for Business running this consultation, which launched over six months ago, analysing responses and reviewing the evidence.

Business rates have dominated the retail industry’s reaction to the Autumn Statement this week, and you can see what we have said here.  I wanted to use this blog to talk about another issue, buried deep in the papers accompanying the Chancellor’s speech: tobacco licensing.  The Autumn Statement includes a commitment to consult on whether to introduce a licensing system for vendors of tobacco, which could include local shops.  The government say (and I believe them) that they approach th

We heard about George Osborne’s promise to devolve business rates to local authorities while waiting to start our fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference, just yards from where the Chancellor was speaking. This looked like another Osborne bombshell, hot on the heels of his planned devolution of Sunday trading and announcement of a national living wage of over £9 by 2020.

This week we launched our Local Shop Report, and it was great to see so many of you in Manchester to be among the first to get the information and to have the chance to discuss it with colleagues in the industry.