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Council agrees not to prosecute shop owners unless "last resort"
July 4, 2009 12:00 AM
Carol outside a shop on the Portobello Road
The local Council has agreed only to prosecute shop keepers who can't pay Gordon's Brown's business rates "as a last resort". Carol Caruana, the candidate for the Liberal Democrat FOCUS team in the July 22nd Colville by-election, said: "Shop closures mean that Portobello Road is in danger of turning into a bog standard high street. But the Council's new pledge is too little, too late. Anyone would think there was an election on!"
The Council failed to solve the Woolworths problem, saying only that they would "support the landlord" in its efforts to re-let the site.
"This was the same landlord whose first idea was to demolish the entire site and stick a luxury development there," said Carol Caruana. "So many people still bring it up when I meet them on the doorstep. They remember that it was the Liberal Democrat FOCUS team who exposed that dreadful scheme. Labour were deafeningly silent.
"When the shop is re-let after the 'Bello Market' experiment, it must be for the use of the entire local community."