{"id":788376,"date":"2026-10-01T09:08:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T09:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/788376\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T09:08:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T09:08:11","slug":"fuel-prices-leave-people-in-the-south-asking-what-can-we-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/788376\/","title":{"rendered":"Fuel prices leave people in the South asking &#8216;what can we do?&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ian Govier manages the Littlewick Green Motor Company garage in Maidenhead, and said his costs had &#8220;gone up dramatically over the years&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Ten years ago, we&#8217;d look at having [a profit margin of] 6p a litre, now I really need close to 15p a litre to still have the same profit,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said he had also spotted customers habits changing, including more using cash as a way to &#8220;control their budgets&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We are definitely seeing instead of putting your normal \u00a350 pounds in to fill up, a lot of people are now sticking in \u00a310, \u00a320,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Amid the increase in costs, Govier said he was also having to tackle thefts &#8211; with some using <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cq9860162dj2o\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">illegal &#8220;ghost&#8221; registrations<\/a> to prevent cameras from reading their number plates.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said he had been forced to invest in a new camera system to tackle such thefts, which also &#8220;eats into profits&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;If you don&#8217;t have a profit you can&#8217;t invest in the cameras, you can&#8217;t invest in your staff, you can&#8217;t invest in people,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ian Govier manages the Littlewick Green Motor Company garage in Maidenhead, and said his costs had &#8220;gone up&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-788376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788376","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=788376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}