Are we running out of petrol stations?

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

They both sell pricey liquids whose value 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 competitors from supermarkets, who undercut them on price tag, often promoting their product as a loss leader to get folks into the shop.

And they are each reducing in number at an alarming price, especially in rural places.

Broken Hertford

But not just rural locations. Take Hertford, county town of (you guessed it) Hertfordshire, situated just 21 miles north of Trafalgar Square. Less than 10 years ago there have 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And they’ve not even been replaced by supermarket forecourts.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 could 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 space nor the inclination to start selling fuel.

So if you live in Hertford and want to refuel your auto, you’ve 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 several as 30 a week, according to some reports.

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

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

Not working at the car wash

The circumstance is getting exacerbated by the loss of income from vehicle-wash facilities.

It appears we’re no longer willing to buy tokens for 1 of those (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 physique reckons a common 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 each and every hypermarket draining the complete volume of 5 independent internet sites out of a neighborhood region, resulting in a loss of jobs (an average independent forecourt gives up to 8 portion and complete time jobs), a loss of neighborhood facilities and decreased fuel resilience in the occasion of a crisis, such as the panic acquiring seen in March 2012.”

To address the dilemma, the PRA desires local and national government to limit the quantity of new supermarket forecourt openings by way of the planning application approach.

Market forces

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

Same goes with conventional British pubs. Ask not for whom the bell tolls at closing time, and all that.

But most likely 4 instances out of 5 I fill up the car at a supermarket. And I don’t get to the pub half as often as I would like. So I’m performing little if anything to arrest the deep modifications taking place in these sectors.

Possibly market place forces are irresistible, and pubs and local garages are not immovable objects. Certainly appears that way.

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

But it would only serve us right if they did.

What do you reckon? Should some thing be accomplished to save our independent petrol retailers?

Are we running out of petrol stations?