Press Releases

ACS (the Association of Convenience Stores) has called on the Government to do more to help with the rising cost of employment and to ensure that wage rates do not have a negative impact on job prospects.

In its annual submission to the Low Pay Commission, ACS has raised concerns about the measures that retailers are being forced to take as a result of the National Living Wage increasing to £7.50 per hour in April 2017. Key figures from the submission include:

The Scottish Grocers Federation and Association of Convenience Stores have responded to an announcement from the Scottish Government commissioning further work into the viability of a deposit return scheme in Scotland, outlining the problems that a scheme would cause for retailers and urging the Government to focus on effective measures to increase recycling rates.

ACS has welcomed an announcement from the Competition and Markets Authority on the future of rollover contracts for microbusinesses.

From today, suppliers will not be able to lock microbusinesses into automatic rollover contracts. In addition, measures introduced today will ensure that suppliers display prices online to make it easier for businesses to compare different tariffs.

The latest figures from the Association of Convenience Stores have shown an increase in investment over the last quarter, but concerns about the impact of rising employment costs.

Convenience stores across the UK invested £193m in their businesses between March and May, which is an increase on both the previous quarter (£154m) and the same quarter in 2016 (£181m).

ACS (the Association of Convenience Stores) has reacted to the Queen’s Speech, calling on the Government to ensure that changes to the energy market include both domestic and non domestic consumers.

During the speech, the Queen stated that the Government ‘will ensure fairer markets for consumers, this will include bringing forward measures to help tackle unfair practices in the energy market to help reduce energy bills.’

The hustings debate, organised by ACS and the Federation of Small Businesses, featured Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell (Labour), Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Gauke (Conservative) and Baroness Kramer (Liberal Democrats) being questioned on their plans to support small businesses through economic incentives.

An influential committee of Scottish MSPs has acknowledged that convenience retailers do not have the space to facilitate a Deposit Return Scheme.

The report (available here) by the Environmental Sub Group in the Scottish Parliament has identified that one of the central barriers to a deposit return scheme is the “lack of space for DRS collection facilities in smaller shops or independent retailers”.

ACS has responded to the government’s consultation which sets out their proposals to change the range of sanctions available to tackle the illicit tobacco trade, calling on them to focus their resources on making better use of existing sanctions.

The Home Office have published the latest figures from the 2016 Commercial Victimisation Survey, showing that there were around 3.5m incidents of customer theft against businesses in 2016, up from 3.4m in the year before, with a total of 5.2m crimes committed against wholesale and retail premises.

ACS has called on energy regulator Ofgem to ensure that local shops and other small businesses are included in proposals to limit backbilling of electricity and gas. Currently, suppliers have signed up to voluntary agreements to only backbill domestic consumers for a maximum of 12 months.