30 years of Sunday trading
Edmund Greaves, head of editorial at MRM, considers the 30-year anniversary of Sunday trading legalisation and looks at the dates for the month ahead in August.
It’s Sunday afternoon, 3.30pm. Your correspondent, dear reader, finds himself in a race against time.
- The lawn needs mowing (it’s sunny for once in yet another drab summer in the South West).
- He needs to go to Screwfix to buy a wood drill bit (nothing like a bit of weekend carpentry).
- He also needs to buy last minute groceries (as a family we’re not very good at getting everything in one go).
Like the plot of a particularly lame thriller, Edmund is in a race against the clock thanks to Sunday trading laws.
In the end, I mowed the lawn, took the trimmings to the recycling centre and bought the wood drill bit. The groceries went unpurchased.
It didn’t used to be this way: 28 August is the 30th anniversary of the legalisation of Sunday trading in England and Wales. That legalisation only legalised trading between the hours of 11:00 to 16:00. Beforehand was a bizarre hodge podge of what you could or could not buy on a Sunday (bicycle parts but not a repair, shoe repairs but not shoelaces).
The new rules were heavily influenced by campaign groups such as ‘Keep Sunday Special’ – a curious alliance of SME organisations, religious groups and trade unions.
The net result: at one of our local supermarkets we have absurd situation where the shop actually opens before 11:00 on a Sunday. You can walk around and put things in your trolley – they just don’t turn the tills on until 11:00 so you can’t pay for anything. It is a farcical display of “these rules are not fit for purpose” as people wander around the supermarket, unable to pay for what they want before an arbitrarily allotted time.
I understand why we don’t finally ditch them – some people will end up having to work really late on a Sunday, and small businesses like to have an edge on opening hours.
But the truth is protecting hours on a Sunday is a throwback to a different era and for me doesn’t make sense. SME groups might complain about a level playing field, but anecdotally in my town the only ‘small businesses’ that take advantage of these exemptions are overpriced convenience shops (quite a few actually just smaller and pricier versions of big supermarkets) and petrol stations.
Any entrepreneuring Government would do well to scrap them, and potentially introduce mitigations for workers such as a wage premium for unsociable hours – something that is relatively common in sectors such as the NHS.
Coming up in August
August is typically a quiet Summer month as people take time away for childcare and get those well-deserved breaks in.
There are some dates of note however, and the usual suspects march on.
The Bank of England is set to make a fresh rate decision on 1 August, kicking off the month with a potential bang.
Monthly wage and employment data falls on 13 August, while inflation is updated the next day on 14 August. Monthly GDP figures arrive on 15 August.
The UK Summer Bank Holiday is early this year, falling on 26 August. The next day (27 August) Ofgem will announce its latest energy price cap adjustment.
All the best, wishing a warm and pleasant summer from us here at MRM and Mouthy Money.