This Is Guernsey

By Gemma Hockey

IN ENGLAND, Sunday 23 December is expected to be the biggest shopping day of the year - but not in Guernsey. Christmas this year falls on a Tuesday, which retailers say makes the preceding Sunday the most important shopping day of the year.

Consumers tend to do their last-minute present shopping two days before 25 December, leaving Christmas Eve free to buy food.

The St Peter Port constables have not received any applications from retailers to open on 23 December - and it is highly unlikely that permission would be granted.

Constables’ secretary Ray Le Poidevin said there were very strict laws about which retailers can trade on a Sunday. ‘Anybody in possession of a Sunday trading licence can open on Sunday 23,’ he said. ‘But places like Creasey’s are too big and could not open anyway, according to the current Sunday trading laws.

‘St Peter Port Douzaine will always say yes as long as the legislation says it can. There is no facility in the law for special dispensation for a premises to open on a Sunday if they don’t fit the criteria,’ he said.

Mr Le Poidevin said the only exception was the granting of a special licence to Culture and Leisure for the weekend’s Longue Veille celebration at Castle Cornet.

There are about 35 premises in St Peter Port that can trade on a Sunday, which includes those permitted to open only when a cruise liner is visiting.

Tony Creasey, chairman of the Chamber of Commerce’s retail subcommittee, said: ‘It’s something we are used to and, in fairness to Commerce and Employment, it did approach the Chamber of Commerce in 2006 and ask whether there was likely to be any drive for a challenge to the legislation or a review of the Sunday trading laws.

‘We communicated with major supermarkets at the time and it was agreed that this year was no different from five or six years ago, when the same happened.

‘We have survived in the past and we didn’t want to request changes in the law for this year. There are one or two who now, I expect, regret not investigating this further but the point is we accept that this is the environment in which we trade.

‘Nobody, as far as I know, has been looking to demand any changes,’ said Mr Creasey.

He added that many staff, not just his own, would prefer to spend the Sunday before Christmas with family.