SIR, This time last year a new initiative called Small Business Saturday was launched in the run-up to Christmas and urged everyone to get out and support their local High Streets, it is estimated the campaign delivered £460 million of spending with the UK’s small businesses. This year Small Business Saturday will be on Saturday December 6 and the Federation of Small Businesses in the Borders are again urging both its members and you, their customers, to get involved and try and deliver even more to support our town centres.

Small businesses in the Borders are vital to our communities, they create local jobs for local people who are then able to spend their wages and grow the economy. Our local town centres are about more than purely shops, but retailers form a key part of the offer to visitors and act as a barometer of how well the town is doing. The FSB’s survey data shows that growth ambitions are muted for retailers; 38% experienced decreased profitability; 33% witnessed falling sales volumes; and 37% used a personal credit card as a source of finance for day-to-day spending. Facing these figures, it is no wonder that 62% of members thought that their town centre was performing poorly.

The future of Borders town centres has been discussed a great deal recently, both with a Government Minister visiting town centre businesses in Hawick and at the council’s most recent economic development committee. Our town centres need to be managed to keep public assets and new infrastructure located there creating footfall for local businesses. We also need to realise that town centres need to be more than shopping centres these days so initiatives to welcome business and residential use would be most welcome. Work needs to be done on; infrastructure to make town centres easy to visit and park in; safety – crime and the perception of crime has an impact on business and consumer decisions; and costs, both regulatory and financial to cut the cost of being located in town centres.

Please do what you can to support your own town centre’s small businesses on December 6. This could mean simply visiting a small number of local businesses on the day itself, or using social media to urge your friends to get involved and enjoy their high street that weekend. Check out Small Business Saturday UK’s Facebook and Twitter pages to see what other people are getting up to and make sure you share what you are doing. A combined effort will make a huge difference to local small businesses this year.

I am etc., Hans Waltl Borders Chairman Federation of Small Businesses