I have published some pictures of shops and shopping in Ramsgate for you all to enjoy, they come from one of my reprints of old guides, Ramsgate and Broadstairs by Camera and Pen 1904-05 you can of course buy it post free from the michaelsbookshop.com website or come into the shop (closed Thursdays and Sundays) browse buy, as is your inclination.I was talking recently to one of the local surveyors part of his job is to assess shop rents in Thanet and obviously we discussed the situation in Ramsgate and particularly Margate town centres, where there are too many empty shops at the moment. Now at the moment shop rentals are assessed on the position of the shop and the area of the shop part of the building, business rates are calculated from average the shop rental values per square meter in any given part of the towns.
For the most part this is all sill being calculated as though Westwood Cross hadn’t happened, this is also not helped by the fact that most shop leases stipulate that rentals can only rise at rent reviews.
It is obvious that something has got to give, pretty much the only thing that can survive and afford the current rents and rates are the bars and restaurants that make up our emerging café culture. However there is a big problem here, that is the café culture is dependent on the towns having interesting shops, both in terms of the shops attracting their customers and also a lively town centre having a safe and comfortable atmosphere.
My feelings are that both local and national government need to act on this issue, however I am really uncertain how, we currently have a situation where a betting shop, late night takeaway etc has the same overheads a towns bookshop while the libraries art galleries theatres are heavily subsidised. Now the bookshops in Broadstairs and Margate are closing so what is the solution?
Our society has got into a situation where a very large proportion of our earned income is spent paying for buildings and land, and another large and increasing proportion is being taken in taxation. We are, as it were spending too much buying our own country. All of this hangs on the small proportion of people engaged in the production and distribution of the goods and services that we all need.
Interestingly, you can view the rateable values of business premises via the following url:
ReplyDeleteVOA
I was suprised at how much some businesses had to pay - and the odd variations between premises.
There are also a wide variety of premises listed for business rates, which also appears to include pieces of land used for car parking and in one case the site used by an ice cream van !!