Local Member of Parliament for Hastings and Rye, Sally-Ann Hart, has asked small shopkeepers to enter the Best Small Shops competition, celebrating the successes of small shops and the central role they play in their local community, particularly in response to Covid-19.
The Best Small Shops competition is open to any small shop (defined by Mrs Hart’s office as “a non-corporate business selling goods or services to the public for use or consumption rather than for resale, from a business rated premises in the UK”) operating in the UK. The competition is free to enter and all shops who enter will also be promoted to consumers through an online Indie Retail Directory.
Shopkeepers can nominate their businesses until Friday, September 11 2020 via www.bestsmallshops.co.uk. A shortlist will be announced in October with winners announced in November.
The judges will be looking for evidence of a small shop’s entrepreneurial spirit, ways that they have been innovative in their business and what they have done to have a lasting positive impact on their community.
The shortlisted small shops will then be in with the chance to win one of five awards, including the newly launched award for small shops response to Covid-19.
Following the launch of this competition, Sally-Ann said “small shops and stores have been the backbone of our communities in recent months as we have faced the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of the corner shops in our villages and local communities have been open for us so we can continue to be supplied with the essentials as we entered lockdown.”
“I urge all local small shops to enter this competition and take part. You are all deserving of the award given the mammoth efforts you have gone to in remaining open during this challenging period, so now submit your entry and give your shop a chance of winning.”
The entries for 2020’s Best Small Shop competition are now open. Submit your entry at www.bestsmallshops.co.uk.
Source: Press release from the office of Sally-Ann Hart
Image Credits: Kenneth Bird .
I hope the butcher’s shop in Cinque Ports Street enters – excellent products, super staff.
Also hope the fruit shop next door does ‘Sweet Williams’ and ‘The Rye Deli’. I know they have been doing various deliveries and I am able to collect so I just ring with my order, they call me back once they know the price, pay over the phone and then wait outside with the car and they bring out my box of fruit and veg! One of the ladies at Rye Deli also kindly offers to drop my bag of lovely goodies at my door when she is walking past on her way home! What service and we must continue and start supporting all our other local businesses otherwise we will lose them – after all they are part of what makes Rye such a lovely place to live!
Yes, support and say thank you to the shops of Rye, which have been and are brilliant! And use them! But a (national) competition? No thank you. They all serve different needs and markets in slightly different ways, and they are ALL winners, not one plucked out of the air!