FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL – THE STORY OF A VALLEYS HIGH STREET
Store closures, business failures, job losses and the worst Christmas for 10 years – the retail sector is having a tough time at the moment. But if high street giants are struggling, spare a thought for small traders. Thomas Deacon spoke to shopkeepers in
TONYPANDY’S high street used to look like any other bustling high street.
The town at the heart of the Rhondda used to have people queuing out the doors of its shops and you’d have to be careful not to bump into anyone as you walked through the throng.
Running a business back then was a lucrative career – but now it’s a constant struggle.
In October 2017, our reporters visited Tonypandy after it was handed the unwanted accolade of Wales’ worst shopping district.
Now more than a year later, the town has been branded the fourth worst retail location in the UK and the worst in Wales.
Commercial Finance experts ABC Finance have been investigating where the UK has been most affected by the decline of the high street, based on shop vacancy rates and Tonypandy came in fourth place in the UK, the only Welsh high street to feature in the list.
Speaking on Thursday, Mike Penrose, who has run Dunraven Shoe Repairs for 40 years, said: “If nothing changes they can build a concrete wall across Porth and flood the lot. Because it’ll be a ghost town.
“It’s a ghost town now, but we’re just hanging on by our fingernails now and unless they do something we can’t go on like this.”
With high business rates, dwindling footfall and a lack of support from local government, many business owners and residents feel like they’ve been left behind.
And on a wet, blustery Thursday it’s not hard to see why Mike isn’t optimistic about the future of his hometown.
At lunchtime, when most high streets should be bustling, there are few people wandering up and down Dunraven Street, now flanked by several shuttered shops.
Mike said: “If this was a steel industry or a coal industry, we’d be on strike now. I think it’s like hundreds of thousands of jobs in Britain that’ve gone in the retail sector, and it’s really starting to hit home now.”
It wasn’t always like this for business owners in Tonypandy.
The former coal mining town was once one of the busiest in the Rhondda, and some of the shopkeepers still surviving and residents can remember a very different time.
Founder of community group Improving Tonypandy, Wendy Allsop, 55, said: “Back when I can remember you did all your shopping in Pandy. You could get everything you needed. Now, you can’t even buy men’s clothes on the high street.”
When Mike first started his shoe repair business he had four members of staff and became so successful he could expand to 16 members of staff with shops across south Wales.
Now with fewer and fewer people visiting the high street, Mike is sometimes left waiting for a single customer to walk through the door.
Mike said: “Back 40 years ago you couldn’t walk up the street. You had to dodge people and cars to get past.
“There were four cinemas here, now we haven’t got any. The library is just about hanging on. There were four of us working here, we’d have shoes up to our eyeballs. The high street would be chockablock.
“I feel we’ve been let down, totally let down. I don’t want to point the finger at this government, it’s been all governments. Long term.”
Now just 40 years later some traders struggle to make more than £100 in a week.
Wahid Saraj recently set up a business on Dunraven Street after moving from London.
Since opening his ornaments and jewellery shop around three weeks ago, Wahid said he’s not made more than £50.
Wahid said: “Nobody comes. If it continues like this we’ll have to go back soon. Greggs, the gambling shop and the charity shop do OK and that’s it.”
Even Mike, who once employed 16 people, said he struggles to make much more than £100 a week.
Speaking on Thursday, he said: “I’m not doing OK. Do you know how much money I took yesterday? It’s law in Britain isn’t it that you have to pay minimum wage – I didn’t take minimum wage yesterday.
“I’ve taken £8 this morning. This week I haven’t taken £100.”
Shop owners are now even more worried about the future after two banks announced they would close on Dunraven Street.
Barclays and Santander are both set to shut up shop in 2019, getting rid of two of the main attractions on the high street.
Wendy said: “A lot of the footfall in the town has been people going to the bank and then going shopping afterwards.
“People just don’t understand the geography up here in the Valleys. They might say that the next bank is just 3.4 miles away, but up here that’s a difficult journey for a lot of people.”
For some the situation isn’t all doom and gloom.
Craig Griffiths has worked at Hilda’s Florist on Dunraven Street for around 30 years and has seen how trade has declined – but says traders shouldn’t look back.
Craig, 45, from Tonyrefail, said: “We are very busy these days. With our business we take phone orders, deliveries and online. You can buy from us without ever having to come into the shop, so a quieter high street doesn’t affect us as much.
“We are in a better position now than we have ever been. You are now able to park pretty much right outside most of the shops.”
Despite his own business, which he’s run for around 30 years, ticking along, Craig is still realistic that the area needs help.
He said: “The high business rates do make it a very unattractive proposition. That’s the main issue. Can it get any worse? I don’t think it can. Our saviour is the small independent businesses. I think it’s just changing times. You just have to evolve, it’s pointless looking back.”
The area has already seen a number of recent changes, including allowing cars to drive down Dunraven Street.
The scheme was discussed with traders in 2017 and the work has since been carried out, but some traders say it’s contributed to the decline, with fewer people walking past their shop fronts.
Yako Yahia ran a restaurant on Dunraven Street until November when rising costs forced him to close.
Yako came to Tonypandy from London in 2011 and said he “fell in love” with the area and its people.
Now he’s angry at the situation in the town he now calls home.
Yako said: “All this money they spent on the road, why don’t they spend it on the businesses instead?
“If you had any knowledge and even some experience of business then you would take this money and help businesses first and then you can look after the road.”
Businesses have also been offered improvement grants, but Yako said this doesn’t help if you don’t have any customers. He said: “They offered me £1,000 for a sign. But we don’t need that – we need people.”
Every business wev spoke to said business rates were making the problems worse.
Mike said: “These business rates, what a contradiction in terms – there’s no business here.”
Craig added: “The high business rates do make it a very unattractive proposition. That’s the main issue.
“People like the idea of being their own boss, but it’s hard to do with the high business rates.”
For Wendy, who has lived in Tonypandy for more than 30 years, the number of empty shops is “heartbreaking” and she feels the business rates contribute to the amount of shuttered shops.
She said: “It’s just not viable for someone to set up a business, the rates are too high. The bigger businesses can weather the business rates, but the smaller ones can’t. But we still need to encourage people to come here and offer new businesses.”
Now traders are demanding they get the support they desperately need, and urged people not to just look at the negatives.
Wendy said: “We want to improve Tonypandy. It’s not just about the shopping, and while you can’t go back in history you can appreciate what we have got. People don’t look at the history of the buildings, all they see are all the closed up and boarded-up shops.
“We don’t want history to just stop at the Rhondda Heritage Park.”
“We need to shout from the rooftops that we are open for business. The council need to be doing a lot more, I think, to promote us, and people need to stop talking about the negativity.
“We have to stop just saying that there is nothing in Pandy.”
Mike, who said he feels Tonypandy has been “left behind”, wants the area to forget about what the area doesn’t have and look instead at what it does offer.
He said: “On social media and in the media they always got Tonypandy as negative. We need to start fighting back. Everything that comes out of Tonypandy and south Wales in general is negative. We have got to stop focusing on the negative, ‘oh we haven’t got this, we haven’t got that’.”
What does the council say? A spokesperson for Rhondda Cynon Taf Council said: “The council continues to work with local traders to improve the retail area across all of our principal town centres, in difficult times for high streets across the nation.
“Tonypandy has received significant investment in recent times, and in November 2018 the council delivered a major highways project to remove the pedestrian-only area of Dunraven Street. It followed a consultation with local businesses, and was generally well-received as a measure to increase passing trade.
“The work has allowed vehicle access to Dunraven Street in one direction, and the council have introduced a number of short-stay parking bays from 10am each day – greatly improving accessibility to local businesses.
“The project saw a bus stop installed in the centre of Dunraven Street, along with new pedestrian crossing points, street furniture and footways.
“The council also introduced a town centre maintenance grant in Tonypandy from October 2017, to improve the street scene and attract more visitors to the retail area.
“The grant allows landlords and shop owners to apply for funding to help improve the appearance of their property fronts – with up to £1,000 available per property as a 75% contribution to costs.
“It has proven very popular, with 38 properties having grants approved worth a collective £38,886 – with local landlords and business owners also contributing £19,232 in total towards their schemes.
“Due to the demand, the scheme was extended in July 2018 and further extensions to the scheme will shortly be considered as part of the council’s 2019/20 budget strategy.
“These measures follow the introduction of free parking in Tonypandy town centre, with all charges abolished by the council from April 2017. Free parking was also introduced in Mountain Ash and Porth, while charges were reduced in Aberdare and Pontypridd.”