Tim Newark

result. The answer to this is to charge online business rates.

Let the big internet traders cough up and cover some of the costs of our rising social care. These international billionaire companies can well afford it and it would help to improve their public image if they are seen to be contributing more to the social costs of the countries they sell in.

Then cut the business rates of high street stores, especially the independent traders that give more character and variety.

Or, as some retailers say, ditch business rates altogether and replace it with a local sales tax that would apply equally to online and offline retailers. That way bricks are not penalised over clicks.

Councils also see rising parking charges as a cash cow and yet, as shopping guru Mary Portas pointed out in her review into the future of our high streets, it is essential that councils “provide accessible and affordable parking”.

She concluded: “Local areas should implement free controlled parking schemes that work for their town centres and we should have a new parking league table.”

This would help combat the free parking in out-of-town shopping centres that has drawn away so many customers

IT has been predicted that over the next decade half of Britain’s shop premises will have disappeared. Many of them will be lost for ever, converted into residential properties or offices. At the same time e-commerce will have risen to about 40 per cent of all UK retail sales.

“No one owes anyone a living,” says Lucy Simon, a shopkeeper and campaigner for independent traders in Bath. “We have to get smarter at providing a better offer to customers and carry out proper market research. We sell online too and in our shop we stock locally made goods you can’t get anywhere else. But at the end of the day we have to pay out thousands of pounds in rent and rates just to be on the street and the big internet traders don’t.”

Central government and local councils can help to rectify this dire situation by using business rates more creatively, cutting them for high street traders but getting tough on the mega-companies that exploit the web by reducing their own costs and yet shirk the necessary tax burden other traders have to pay.

I don’t want to live in a country where I can’t pop out to my local shops. A healthy high street makes for a healthy population.

‘Cut business rates, charge online giants’