PLEASE BE LOYAL TO NEWPORT, By Cllr. Adrian Meredith

In a small town like Newport, traders & businesses always struggle to make ends meet and never more than at the present time. 2009 is going to be a very difficult year in every ones life and especially in the lives of our shop keepers. Newport is notorious for its high rents and the expensive council tax levied on business premises.

We all like to think of Newport as our town, we like to think of it as a traditional market town, as a vibrant town with its own identity, with its own individual character and with its own individual shops (many of which are privately owned by local people). Specialist shops fill the High Street in such a way that is difficult to find any where else. However, We need to and MUST look after our lovely, unique and ever popular little town. As one of your Borough Council representatives I implore you to, wherever possible, shop locally and support the local business people, be they shops or professional service providers. They will need our support to survive in the difficult period which faces us all over the next two or three years, a period the like of which many will not have experienced before.

Our neighbours, Market Drayton, have no less than 20 empty shops in their town centre (most of which were locally owned when the town was thriving not too many years ago). Now they have gone and gone forever. We can’t allow this to happen to Newport and yet it so easily could if we don’t do our bit to preserve what we have.
Please shop in Newport and help to preserve our town’s unique character and prestigious market town identity.

If we don’t support our towns traders, who will ?