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.

I’ve been pleased to see this week more companies and sector organisations – in farming and the care industry – raising concerns about the chancellor’s decision to introduce a national living wage at £7.20 in April 2016, rising to at least £9 by 2020.

This week we took a trip over the Severn Bridge to the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff for a meeting of the Cross Party Group on Small Shops.  As with All Party Groups in Westminster, these groups can provide a useful focal point for discussing issues relating to particularly industries or issues, and before I forget, here is more information on the inquiry being led by the Small Shops Group in Westminster into Britain’s Everyday Entrepreneurs, which we helped launch in June.

David Cameron has today urged businesses to give their staff a pay rise.  Clearly the Government’s economic analysis is that with inflation low, increasing wages would give further fuel to UK plc’s growth at little risk.

That macroeconomic analysis may be correct, but I have to start my response by looking at the microeconomic picture – the costs and income that dictate the way that businesses are run.  There are two problems for our sector with a strategy based on a hike in wages, and specifically in the National Minimum Wage.

Announcing business rates reform was the easy bit. Now the Chancellor has to work out what changes to this £26bn tax revenue stream will be fairer, pro-growth, fiscally responsible and popular.

We hear from CAMRA this morning that 31 pubs are closing each week. I’ll start and finish this blog with a personal observation you may wish to dismiss as just that.

A couple of interesting statistics have come to light in the past week that are relevant to ACS’s long running campaign on effective town centre first planning policy. The first was broadcast as part of a Dispatches programme that aired last week on the fate of the big four supermarkets. They commissioned Glenigans to look at what had happened to supermarkets' plans to invest in new stores.

This week I gave evidence to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee. You can see for yourself what I said here, but in summary, I explained our research into the application of the town centre first planning policy, which has actually allowed three-quarters of new retail investment to take place out of town.