Closures
Six Pubs Close Every Week in the UK. The Ones Still Open Are Run by Landlords With Second Jobs.
Your landlord has a second job now. Not because they want one. Because it is the only way to keep the lights on and the taps running when you walk in on a Saturday.
More Than 1,000 Pharmacies Have Shut in Ten Years. Here Is What That Actually Costs You.
More than 1,000 chemist shops have closed in the last ten years. That number should bother you, and not just because you liked the one on your corner.
The Shop That Has Been There 35 Years and Nobody Knows How
Every town has one. You walk past and it is always dead. No queue, no passing trade, no Instagram presence. And yet, somehow, the owner is still there. Still at the bench. Still…
In Half of Britain, the High Street Is a Van That Turns Up
In a lot of Britain the high street is not a street at all. It is a van that turns up.
Why a man who sold three companies spends his days talking about the British high street
I tried to retire. Properly tried. Different countries, different cities, the full tour. And what I kept finding, wherever I went, was that the thing I missed most was British…
95 Bank Branches Are Closing This Spring and the Corner Shop Is Being Left to Pick Up the Slack
Ninety-five bank branches are closing in the UK between now and spring. That is not a rumour. That is the report.
150 British Heart Foundation Shops Have Closed. If They Cannot Make the High Street Work, What Chance Does Your Local Independent Have?
The charity shops are leaving. That is the sentence I did not expect to be writing, but here we are.
Why Peter Watson Films Independents Every Day: The Reason Behind Keep Them Open
I sold three companies and did nothing for two years.
Business Rates for High Street Independents Have More Than Doubled in One Year
The average business rate was £3,500. It is now £8,500. In one year.
Every British High Street Is Starting to Look the Same
Someone wrote to keepthemopen.com recently and I have not been able to stop thinking about it. The message was simple: go back twenty years, and every time you arrived in a new…
Councils Are Spending Millions to Save the High Street While Charging You £4 an Hour to Park on It
Three stops on the high street costs you £12 before you've touched a door handle. That is the maths councils have built, apparently without noticing.
Some Independent Shops Will Close No Matter How Much You Support Them
There is a version of this problem nobody talks about, and a story sent into keepthemopen.com put it plainly enough that I had to stop and write it up.
Tell your independent owner why you keep coming back
The person behind the counter at your local does not know if they are going to make it this month.
The Free Eye Test Is Not a Gift: Why Loss Leaders Cost Independent Opticians Their Livelihood
Nothing is ever free. That is the whole argument, and if you take one thing from this, take that.