00:00Hello, my name is Luke Patrick and I'm a reporter for the Blackpool Gazette.
00:04This week we are looking at the number of empty shop units in Blackpool Town Centre and asking Blackpool residents
00:09what they think the reasons are behind them. This is what they had to say.
00:13So how significant do you think the issue of businesses closing and having empty shop units in Blackpool Town Centre is at the moment?
00:22I think it's
00:25fairly bad.
00:28You seem to get a lot of pop-up shops that are there for a couple of weeks and then disappear.
00:33Yeah.
00:36What do you think the reason is behind that, that they're not staying very long or closing a lot?
00:42I think the business rates.
00:47The business rates are too high? Yeah.
00:51Is there any other
00:53kind of
00:54reasons you think that they're struggling with it, maybe because of the crisis or stuff like that?
01:00I don't think that the council
01:04gives enough help for people when they're first starting the business.
01:13Just to pay your business rates, it's going to cost you £2,000 a week or whatever they're going to charge.
01:19And
01:21when you're starting off, by the time you had all your overheads up, gas, electric, wages, things like that,
01:28you can't guarantee that you're going to be making that much money.
01:33Yeah.
01:34What kind of businesses would you like to see more of in Blackpool to fill these empty units?
01:42Or what do you think Blackpool needs in general?
01:46We need a bit more high-street shopping. I don't think we need as many carrot shops as we've got.
01:56I don't think we need quite as many
02:00cheapy shops.
02:02What would fall into that category of shops?
02:08Well, certainly in Blackpool,
02:10catering, kind of fast food or sandwich places, things like that.
02:40You
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