Keep Trade Local

Contents

1. How small businesses are fighting to Keep Trade Local
2. Waking up to local needs
3. National voice, local impacts
4. Local variation
5. Businesses helping themselves

How small businesses are fighting to Keep Trade Local

Over the past few decades, our high streets have been transformed. Between 1986 and 1997, the number of out-of-town shopping centres increased four-fold. In the same period, four out of 10 small shops disappeared.

More recently, the changes have been of a different character. The pace of out-of-town developments has slowed, but the major supermarkets have moved onto high streets and suburban areas in the form of smaller, 'local' outlets. While official figures suggest that the overall number of convenience stores has increased, the number of independent convenience stores continues to decline - by around 2,000 in 2005 alone, according to the grocery sector analysts IGD (source All Party Parliamentary Group in High Street Britain: 2015 pg.50).

So are we "sleepwalking to disaster", as some have claimed? It's a bold statement - but that's how local business campaigners feel about the way our high streets are headed. And it's now been adopted as a warning slogan by Keep Trade Local (KTL), the grassroots campaign that aims to tackle the biggest issues facing the UK's local shops and businesses.

It's organised at a national level by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), which has published a manifesto focusing on six key challenges for small firms: parking charges; planning regulations; public sector procurement; business rate relief; crime against businesses; and Post Office closures.