Retailers will be able to extend their daily opening hours between Monday and Saturday in the run up to Christmas and throughout January, including 24-hour trading, it has been announced.
From tomorrow (Wednesday 2nd December), as England returns to a system of tiered restrictions, all non-essential retail will be able to reopen and planning rules limiting opening hours will be eased to allow shops to be open for longer.
While being a boost to business, these measures will help ease transport pressures and make socially distanced shopping easier by giving people greater flexibility to choose when they shop and avoid peak times.
Restrictions are normally imposed by individual local authorities when they grant planning permission for individual stores. Typically, such conditions limit the opening hours that a business may trade, for example, from 09:00 to 19:00, unless a separate arrangement is agreed in writing with the relevant local planning authority.
In normal circumstances, a retailer would need to apply to remove or vary such a condition under Section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. This can be a lengthy process, taking several weeks or more.
The measures announced this week make it clear to local planning authorities that they should take a positive approach when engaging with retailers who wish to extend their retail opening hours and look to relaxing local restrictions where possible.
Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick MP has said:
“None of us entirely enjoy navigating the crowds, especially now when social distancing is so important for controlling the pandemic. So with these changes your local shops can open longer, ensuring more pleasant and safer shopping with less pressure on public transport.
Article continues below this advertisement “How long will be a choice for shopkeepers and at the discretion of the council. Councils should offer these hard pressed entrepreneurs and businesses the greatest possible flexibility this festive season”.
The majority of shop owners have already made their premises COVID-secure. Allowing retailers to extend their opening hours from Monday through to Saturday will mean an even safer shopping experience in the run up to Christmas and through the January sales, when shops are usually much busier.
If the Isle of Wight Council suspects shops are not upholding the high COVID-secure standards set by the government since the beginning of the pandemic, they have the power to take action in order to keep the public safe.
Anyone bothered to ask the shop staff what they think of being made to work these Unsociable hours? Or does their opinion not matter.
How about some free parking to encourage shoppers to come into the town?!
Absolutely agree. All large towns on the mainland have late night shopping at least once a week on the run-up to Christmas and the parking is FREE Isle of Wight Council.
I’ve got loads of money to spend all day and all night, it’s not like we all lost jobs or furloughed on less money to live, who on earth is gona be shopping 24hrs unless rich or famous…. Jesus this is starting to sound like a fantasy film…
I just can’t believe it, make everyone skint, redundant or furloughed but open shops 24hrs to spend money we don’t have.
Whos gona pay the 24hr wages if the shops haven’t made a penny through lock downs, plus security surely needed to protect staff etc
I’m just gob smacked
Agree .. but what shops are there really left to stay open!
So speaks another taxpayer funded state trougher who, along with all his other public sector colleagues, have been totally unaffected by the deliberate actions they have inflicted on the rest of us – this is pathetic window dressing to make it look like they are ‘helping’ people to recover some of the livelihoods that Westminster and Whitehall have destroyed and as we all know it will do absolutely nothing to help at all