Businesses and councillors have attended an event in Lichfield in a bid to address concerns over the future of retail in Lichfield.
Organised by Friary Shoes, the session was designed to promote the value of independent traders.
It was attended by representatives from local shops and the president of Lichfield Chamber of Commerce.
Adam Lumb, director of Friary Shoes, said it was crucial that independent businesses were able to flourish in Lichfield.
“We wanted to put on this event to help highlight the importance of independent and family businesses on the high street as we’re concerned about the future of retail in Lichfield.
“Retail is hard at the moment, everywhere across the UK – it’s been hard for a number of years now. The reduction of people visiting towns and cities due to lifestyle changes, online shopping and out-of-town retail parks results in reduced footfall.
“As a result, the hustle and bustle of the high street is no longer the same, and empty retail units are unfortunately commonplace in most in town and city centres these days.
“We don’t want a world without high street shops. All the independent business owners we know take immense pride in offering excellent service, as they care about the town or city they’ve based their business in, and use their passion and experience to help the local community.
“That’s why we need to work together, to find a way for independent family-run businesses to survive and thrive.”
Adam Lumb, Friary Shoes
Fellow director Tracey Lumb said traders had faced numerous challenges in recent times.
“The last few years have seen retailers trying to survive Brexit, then Covid – and now there’s the recession.
“We’ve hosted this event because we believe independent shop owners need to work together, find ways to collaborate and build a strong community in this area. We need to help each other through the tough times, as it’s not just the business owners who are affected by the downturn, but all the staff and their families too.
“When you run a family business, your employees are more than just employees – they feel like a part of your extended family. Some of our staff have worked with us at Friary Shoes for 20 years or more.
“We’re extremely grateful to everyone who came along to show their support and join in the conversations.”
Tracey Lumb, Friary Shoes
“Promoting our local independent retailers”
Measures such as a reduced all-day parking rate at The Friary Car Park have already been unveiled in a bid to boost numbers visiting Lichfield over the festive period.
Cllr Iain Eadie, Lichfield District Council’s deputy leader and cabinet member for economic growth and development, said:
“I am really grateful to Adam and Tracey for making this happen, and to all the other independent retailers who attended and gave feedback on what would help their businesses, in these continued challenging trading conditions.
“I am really pleased that we were able to pick up the ideas of promoting our local independent retailers through social media while also looking at a Christmas parking offer.
“Our independent retailers are fantastic and in the run up to Christmas, please can I encourage everyone to try and shop in their stores.
“We mustn’t lose them and supporting them through local shopping will help them greatly.”
Cllr Iain Eadie, Lichfield District Council
Good to see engagement but is it really necessary to wear regalia for normal councillor duties. It kind of gives the impression it is all about status and creates a formality gap with normal people, who don’t dress like this. Maybe save it for formal ocassions like Remembrance Sunday and the like.
It’s been said that conventional physical retail has been increasingly hard in this country ‘for a number of years now’, which must also predate the last Global Financial Crisis at the end of the 2000s.
Again, this comes across as yet another ‘stable door’ situation where both the powers that be and the general public as a whole had previously been caught napping over for about 15-20 years or so, but are only really now discussing the issue in depth despite it probably being ‘too little, too late’. Once again, we reap what we sow.
In conclusion, for those who seriously want to keep their beloved smaller shops in town, the obvious answer is (when and where personal funds allow, of course) ‘use them or lose them’.
Hi can lichfield compete against retail parks with free parking. Maybe the council should remove parking tariffs if they don’t want people to shop elsewhere there isn’t enough variety in lichfield now to warrant paying to park. Greedy car parks are what’s killing the town. Maybe for December they could introduce free parking all day every day that’s my suggestion as a consumer stop being so greedy
The work for hs2 blocking the southbound slip road on the A38 doesn’t help. I live in Walton on trent and have to go round the rekin to get to Lichfield now.