Wet weather and the cost of living crisis impact on Alnwick retailers

Richard Knapper, who runs a market stall in Alnwick for Snapper Photography, believes there has been a fall in visitors this summer, especially UK tourists.

"There doesn’t seem to be as many,” he said. “I think the weather has been particularly bad, certainly on the Thursdays and Saturdays when we run the market, the weather has been quite miserable.

"Also it’s possibly the cost of living crisis, people don’t seem to have as much disposable income at the minute so maybe they’re not going on holiday.”

On a positive note, he added: “I’ve been noticing more foreign tourists, which I haven’t seen since before Covid, which is a good thing, people coming to the UK again.

"It’s kicking in again, the last few markets in August has picked up due to the summer holidays, but up until then it’s been very quiet.”

Overall, he thinks the level of tourists has dropped compared to previous years, but this again may be down to the post-Covid spike in UK staycations.

He said: “This year since the cost of living crisis I’m not selling nearly as much. A lot of people walk round and say ‘oh that’s very nice’ and walk off, but that doesn’t pay the bills sadly.”

The rising cost of living, together with the ongoing impact of Brexit, have been among the issues concerning Mark Hoborough, owner of the The Beehive in Alnwick.

Mark, whose business specialises in vintage collectables, art and rare vinyl, said: “One of the things we've had to pre-empt is replacing all of our strip lighting in the shop because it's changing that to LEDs because that's going to save me about £130, £140 a month on my electricity bill moving forward.

“We're always having to look at different factors, whether they're external factors or internal factors. So we have to think about our overhead costs as well as the stock costs as well.

“Things like when it starts to get a little bit darker and a few people around, we open half an hour later and we close half an hour earlier. That saves me six hours a week, which is equivalent to about a day that I don't have to heat the shop.”

For businesses like The Beehive that sell items imported from Europe, Brexit is still having a big impact.

Mark said: “It's a huge impact on us. It's probably costing us as a business about an extra £10,000-12,000 a year now purely because of the UK government stance on it

“It's costing us up to 24.5% in import duty, massive amounts of admin and it makes it very very difficult for us to continue doing it.

“They think it's one size fits all and they haven't given any thoughts to how a small business on the high street that constantly deals with Europe is affected.”

An Alnwick cafe owner, who wanted to remain anonymous, felt Lilidorei had also had an impact

He said: "The impact that we as a cafe have felt, certainly over the school holidays is that the timings have shifted, we’re not getting to see as many children and the families in the town centre, the impact I think being that the Castle, Garden and big adventure playground has impacted quite considerably on the town centre of Alnwick.”

"We do get families come in with their kids but nowhere near as before Lilidorei opened up.”