Shops reopen after months in lockdown

2020-06-18 -

Ashford’s high street came alive on Monday as non-essential businesses reopened their doors for the first time in almost three months.

Once the Covid-19 lockdown came into force on March 23, all sites except those selling food or home supplies were forced to close by the government.

So it was a happy relief on Monday when many business owners could get back to trading – albeit with social distancing and increased safety measures.

Marked out queues lined the high street, one-way systems were implemented in the County Square and Park Mall shopping centres and hand sanitiser was available for free use in most shops.

A common feature of the high street - perhaps one that will become a long-term addition was staff members at the door, directing queues and monitoring one-in, one-out systems.

The most popular reopening proved to be Sports Direct amid a 50% sale for NHS workers.

A queue snaked almost the length of the Lower High Street from just before its opening time of 10am until gone 5.30pm.

In County Square, 17 stores were open on Monday, with shoppers queuing outside Poundland at the former BHS site.

Cafés including The Little Teapot in Park Mall served refreshments, attracting many customers despite no indoor seating being offered.

It was also a big day for Home

Plus Furniture, which had to leave its former Beaver Road base in March to make way for the building of the 16-storey ‘Ashford Shard’ on the site.

Monday was the company’s grand opening in the New Rents unit which formerly housed Argos.

Further away from the town centre, crowds flocked to the Ashford Designer Outlet to update now-out-of-season wardrobes.

Despite a number of the Outlet’s stores deciding not to welcome customers again yet, with 20 not reopening on Mon

day, shoppers were still eager to browse the units that did including big names such as Adidas and Tommy Hilfiger.

The Designer Outlet’s centre manager, Peter Corr, lauded the efforts of his staff and the shop employees alike, saying: “It’s great to welcome people back into the Outlet – it’s been a long couple of months where we’ve been closed.

“What we’ve had to do is put in a lot of measures in place to make sure people are happy, that they can shop here and feel more reassured about shopping.”

Among these precautions, centre bosses have reduced the number of parking spaces and are offering free masks and gloves.

In a statement, they said should there be a need to control visitor numbers, closure barriers “can and will be used to restrict access”.

When asked about Ashford’s reopening, MP Damian Green said: “I’m delighted for the simple reason that hundreds of jobs depend on it happening, so the sooner we get back to something like normal the better.

“It’s great to see people shopping in the town centre and the Outlet, but they need to demonstrate that it’s possible to shop safely and comfortably.

“Everyone will be buying things they couldn’t get over the last three months, but we need to encourage these shoppers to keep coming back in the longer term.”

Ashford Borough Council which reopened its New Rents toilets on Monday - received £116,814 of funding from the EU regional development fund to pay for the changes to the town centre.

Of that cash, it allocated £40,000 to Tenterden, where the authority asked for A-boards to be removed to maximise space on the pavements.

Shoppers faced higher parking charges on Monday after Ashford Borough Council increased its fees. See page 9