Are we running out of petrol stations?

Conventional roadside petrol stations and pubs have a lot in typical.

They both sell pricey liquids whose price tag is inflated by the addition of whopping amounts of duty and value added tax that flows straight to the Inland Income.

They both face stiff competition from supermarkets, who undercut them on value, typically promoting their solution as a loss leader to get folks into the store.

And they are each lowering in quantity at an alarming price, especially in rural regions.

Broken Hertford

But not just rural regions. Take Hertford, county town of (you guessed it) Hertfordshire, situated just 21 miles north of Trafalgar Square. Much less than 10 years ago there had been 2 petrol stations inside a 5-iron of the town hall. Now there are none.

And they’ve not even been replaced by supermarket forecourts. The town may possibly be ‘blessed’ with a Sainsbury and a Tesco (along with a Waitrose and M&S – we like our groceries in Hertford) but neither of them has the area nor the inclination to start selling fuel.

So if you live in Hertford and want to refuel your vehicle, you have got to head out to a mad-busy service station 3 miles away on the A10, or drive to an adjacent town such as Welwyn or Stevenage.

Woe betide you the subsequent morning if you drive home on fumes 1 evening.

Closing time

British pubs are closing at a shocking rate – as a lot of as 30 a week, according to some reports.

Thankfully, this blight has but to afflict Hertford, but that is probably only because most of the regional boozers are tied to the town’s brewery, McMullen.

As for petrol stations – nationwide, independent petrol retailers are closing at the rate of 250 a year according to the Petrol Retailers Association (PRA). The dilemma is at its worst in Wales, Scotland, East Anglia and England’s West Country.

Not functioning at the auto wash

The circumstance is being exacerbated by the loss of income from car-wash facilities.

It seems we’re no longer willing to purchase tokens for 1 of these (frankly, a bit scary) machines when we can pay a gang of strapping young lads down the road to do the job for us.

But it is the supermarkets which stay the principal target of PRA’s wrath. The trade body reckons a typical supermarket fuel outlet sells 11.3 million litres of fuel a year, whereas an independent retailer sells 2.1 million litres a year.

It says: “This figure equates to every single hypermarket draining the complete volume of 5 independent web sites out of a neighborhood area, resulting in a loss of jobs (an typical independent forecourt provides up to 8 element and full time jobs), a loss of neighborhood facilities and decreased fuel resilience in the occasion of a crisis, such as the panic acquiring observed in March 2012.”

To address the issue, the PRA wants local and national government to limit the quantity of new supermarket forecourt openings by means of the arranging application approach.

Marketplace forces

I need to confess to a lingering affection for non-supermarket petrol outlets. I even visited 1 in Norfolk lately exactly where they come out of the office and fill your car up for you.

Exact same goes with traditional British pubs. Ask not for whom the bell tolls at closing time, and all that.

But almost certainly 4 times out of 5 I fill up the car at a supermarket. And I don’t get to the pub half as typically as I would like. So I’m carrying out small if anything to arrest the deep adjustments taking location in these sectors.

Maybe industry forces are irresistible, and pubs and nearby garages are not immovable objects. Undoubtedly appears that way.

We can only hope that when they’re all gone, the supermarkets don’t use the reduction in competition to bump up the costs they discount at the moment.

But it would only serve us right if they did.

What do you reckon? Should anything be completed to save our independent petrol retailers?

Are we running out of petrol stations?