Small Change for Big Change in the High Street, 19-25 September.
The Federation of Small Businesses is asking everyone to support local shops and traders as part of Keep Trade Local Week in Somerset and Wiltshire from 19th to 25th September 2011.
The FSB's Keep Trade Local campaign encourages us all to make more of our local products and services and defend the choice and diversity that customers deserve. The facts and figures show that our high streets are in crisis.
Read more.
Visit the FSB's national Keep Trade Local website to download the manifesto.
Press release, 23 August 2011
The campaign already has support from many of our members who will be displaying and distributing campaign posters and encouraging shoppers to show their support by signing a pledge or the petition.
Download posters - click on your chosen design below
Read what our members say.
Ian Dyer, Somerset and Wiltshire Chairman, Federation of Small Businesses, said:
"We are not asking people to spend more: we are asking people to consider where they spend and what they buy.
By choosing to spend £10 a week with local traders, in independent high street shops, on local services or by buying locally sourced products you will be helping the money stay in the local economy, protecting local jobs and helping safeguard local consumer choice in your community."
Tessa Munt, MP for Wells (pictured here with Weston-super-Mare Chairman, Colin Sandford) has already lent her support to the campaign and signed the pledge.
She has promise to ask the PM to endorse this venture at question time.
The campaign is now gathering momentum and will begin with a visit from the FSB's National Chairman, John Walker.
John Walker supported the campaign saying:
"Small businesses are not just part of the local community, they are the local community. They generate wealth, employment and opportunity. Small businesses rely on customers in their local area to survive, but equally communities depend on successful local businesses."
If you would like to be involved in the FSB any way, even if you don't have much time to spare, please email Mary Mallia: we'd be delighted to hear from you.
Thank you.