Few industries play such a crucial role as retail in keeping down costs for households, creating employment, and investing in communities.
Retailers are responding to the continuing squeeze on household finances and industry-wide competition with keen prices, promotions and deals, helping to keep down the cost of living. Shop prices have fallen for 16 consecutive months and food inflation is at its lowest recorded level.
The industry's 255,000 jobs make it Scotland's largest private-sector employer: some 14 per cent of the total non-government workforce.
The industry is working hard to sustain value for money and build on its record on jobs and community investment, while at the same time adapting to profound structural changes. The fact a broader range of indicators important to the health of Scotland's retail industry, including sales, footfall and shop vacancies, have begun to point in a favourable direction is promising. Support from government will be key to maintaining this trend. The Scottish Government's Budget next month provides a great opportunity to assist.
At the heart of the Budget should be measures that help keep down the cost of doing business and cost of living, provide for a smarter regulatory environment and give retailers the tools to grow.
Business rates should not rise faster than elsewhere in the UK, and the £95 million rates levy on larger retailers, a policy that pushes retail investment away from Scotland, should be cast aside once and for all. The Business Rates Incentivisation Scheme ought to be rejuvenated, with the resulting revenues transparently reinvested in town-centre regeneration or used to incentivise business expansion through the new local discretionary rates relief.
Many retailers have a choice over where to buy or lease property in the UK. The new taxes being devolved in 2015, on purchases of commercial property and landfill, must ensure Scotland remains a competitive place to invest. Keeping taxes down and predictable helps retailers fund their investment plans, especially when retained profits are such an important source of growth finance.
Holyrood has pursued a council tax freeze that has contributed to keeping down the cost of living. It has also reduced demands for wholesale changes to the tax that might place the administrative burden for collecting any replacement tax on employers, for example through a local income tax. Any future rises in council tax ought to be kept to a minimum, for example, in line with inflation.
The fees charged for planning applications are set to rise by 5 per cent in November after a 20 per cent leap last year. Retailers want to see an effective and well-resourced planning system that assists investment in new or existing premises. However, it is far from clear that this further above-inflation rise in fees has been accompanied by an improvement in service to retail and other commercial applicants.
Our building standards system is holding back retail expansion and job creation. A faster and more flexible approach, one that enables retailers to choose from a range of licensed verifiers when applying for building warrants, would help shopkeepers' new or refurbished establishments start trading promptly and spur much-needed investment in retail premises, aiding high streets.
The Scottish Government's 5p carrier bag levy comes into effect next month and the retail industry has engaged on its implementation. This spirit of co-operation must continue, particularly around any future ministerial decisions on the amount to be levied.
Meanwhile, the proliferation of government-inspired self-regulation, voluntary agreements and codes of practice needs to be better thought out and brought within the scope of the administration's better regulation agenda.
A final request. If Scottish ministers receive any windfall consequentials as a result of UK spending decisions they ought to be spent on improving our town centres and infrastructure, for example, broadband, or on a more ambitious timescale for the delivery of the A9.
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