{"id":139037,"date":"2025-09-15T14:07:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T14:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/139037\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T14:07:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T14:07:14","slug":"ministers-urged-to-put-retailers-at-heart-of-economic-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/139037\/","title":{"rendered":"Ministers urged to put retailers at heart of economic policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Lonsdale, director of the SRC, said the current parliamentary session had presented the Scottish retail industry with “a series of almost overwhelming challenges” including Covid and the Ukraine war.<\/p>\n

He added: “Retailers have had to adapt to this new economic norm.<\/p>\n

“That means fewer stores operating from fewer locations with decisions made even more on the return on investment.<\/p>\n

“There has been a complete shift with almost all retailers of scale now operating online.”<\/p>\n

SRC research found that in the year to July shopper footfall to retail destinations in Scotland fell by 0.9% on average.<\/p>\n

Visits to shopping centres also declined by 0.9%.<\/p>\n

The study also reported that government-imposed costs of operating retail stores in Scotland increased by nearly \u00a3200m this year, as a result of increases in business rates and employers’ national insurance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr Lonsdale said: “The next Scottish government needs to put town and city centres and retail destinations at the heart of economic decision making.<\/p>\n

“That should include reducing the cost of business, making it easier to visit and to invest in the high street, and ensuring it’s safe for shoppers and consumers.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Lonsdale, director of the SRC, said the current parliamentary session had presented the Scottish retail industry with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-139037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}