Saving Local Business

Can I really believe that big stores want longer opening hours on Sundays just because they want to make their customers happy? Of course not. We all know that the real motivation is to make more money.

But where is that extra money going to come from? It's not going to be by each consumer spending more because there's only a limited amount of money in the economy that can be spent. No, the real losers are the small local businesses.

When the big stores started to open on Sundays, the small convenience stores that used to be the only source of Sunday supplies suddenly lost valuable trade. The local independent traders that never used to open on Sundays suddenly found themselves having to open in order to keep up with the competition. They don't make any more money in seven days than they did in six, but it costs them a lot more in overheads.

In the last decade, 30,000 small shops have had to close because they can't keep up with the big stores. On average, that's over eight shops shutting up for good every single day. No wonder that MPs are calling for the Office of Fair Trading to launch a Competition Commission investigation into the supermarket sector.

So what the big stores want is not more money from the consumer, but to gain an even bigger slice of the market share by pushing out the small independent businesses. Local shops are important for the strength of local economies and the well-being of communities, particularly for the elderly and disabled and all those with no means of transport who depend on them. That's another reason why we believe in keeping Sunday special.

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