Retail: Leveling The Playing Field?

Brandished “anti-supermarket and anti-consumer”, the plans maped out in the Conservatives’ Quality of Life Policy Group report have been described as “based on ill-informed anti-supermarket myths and would cost customers more.”

BRC director general, Kevin Hawkins, said, “Many of these proposals for retail are ill thought out and based on tired anti-supermarket prejudices. Retailers are already vigorously pursuing environmental and regeneration objectives but these proposals are largely anti-competition and anti-customer.

“David Cameron should accept that our modern, highly competitive, retail environment benefits customers who will not thank him for adopting market-stifling measures.”

The BRC also attacked the Tories’ proposals on retail planning restrictions. Said Mr Hawkins, “Supermarkets are not forced unwilling on neighbourhoods. Retailers engage closely with local communities. They only ever open where they believe there is customer demand. Without local support they will not survive in that location.

“There is already a robust system of democratic accountability for planning decisions. Local people are able to voice objections directly and local authorities exercise extensive planning powers on their behalf. Where town centre retailers are struggling it is mainly due to the combined burden of rents, service charges, rates, energy costs and wage bills which have all shot up in recent years. Imposing planning restrictions on competitors will not reduce any of these costs.”

The Tory proposals also suggest a supplier/retailer code of conduct. On this, Mr Hawkins commented, “There is already a code of conduct under which suppliers can complain about their dealings with supermarkets, but it hasn’t worked as the Office of Fair Trading intended because suppliers haven’t used it.

“We have a highly efficient food chain through which supermarkets support UK agriculture and deliver good value, high quality food to customers. Meddling in the market would only leave customers worse off.”

The car parking charge proposals were also met by deaf ears. Mr Hawkins said, “This proposal wrongly assumes that everyone lives in a town centre, close to a high street and drives a long way to, so called, out of town stores. In fact most supermarkets and retail parks are located in the suburbs close to where people live. The Competition Commission has found that around 90% of all supermarket customers travel less than 20 minutes to their regular store and 60% travel less than ten minutes. Travel to a nearby, suburban store will often be quicker and involve lower carbon emissions than a lengthy trek into a town centre, often already heavily congested with traffic.

“Parking charges are not the main factor determining where people choose to shop. We accept that life is difficult for some high street shops, struggling to cope with a spiralling cost base and shrinking margins but taxing families for doing the weekly supermarket shop is not the answer.”

On carbon emissions reporting Mr Hawkins added, “Retailers are improving their own environmental performance and their customers’ too. For example, they have made specific and ambitious commitments on reducing the impact of bags and waste sent to
landfill. They are developing a reliable system for indicating a product’s whole-life carbon footprint to inform the buying decisions of interested customers.

“Retailers regularly publicise their environmental progress but, before companies are lumbered with bureaucratic new legal requirements to measure, gather and include environmental data in their annual reports, it must be made clear exactly what they are supposed to measure, how this can credibly be done and who wants this information.”