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\n Imran Khan, owner of Carpet Mill in Bearwood Road, Bearwood<\/p>\n
\n Imran Khan, owner of Carpet Mill in Bearwood Road, Bearwood<\/p>\n
\n Frustrated traders say an influx of 24\/7 off-licences, mountains of rubbish and fly-tipping and shoplifting are driving customers away from Bearwood in their droves.\n <\/p>\n
Businesses in Bearwood, on the border of Smethwick and Birmingham, say the problems have got so bad they are considering leaving for good.<\/p>\n
Abuzaffar Sonde, owner of Islamic store Ar-Raqib in Bearwood Road, is one shop owner debating whether to remain open \u2013 saying a rise in crime and the \u2018wrong crowds\u2019 were driving Bearwood in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n
He said the influx of late-night shops and takeaways combined with rising crime and anti-social behaviour \u2013 particularly daily shoplifting, pickpocketing, begging as well as drug-taking \u2013 was giving Bearwood a poor reputation as unsafe and dangerous and that was having a significant impact on footfall.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me I think that\u2019s where the council is going wrong. Too many of one particular type of shop makes no sense to me,\u201d he said on a rainy morning at his Bearwood shop.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve gone and counted them myself and there are 15 shops all the same and all 24\/7.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no need for that. And we\u2019ve got five bookies and to my surprise there\u2019s going to be another 24\/7 casino.<\/p>\n
\u201cFamilies are being shattered by gambling and people don\u2019t have the money in their pockets and we\u2019re just encouraging more people to gamble.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the lease running out on his shop, Mr Sonde said he was having to weigh up whether to remain open in 2026 \u2013 but the demise of Bearwood was beginning to make his decision seem a little easier.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to the point where next year we will have to see what we are going to do,\u201d he continued. \u201cBusiness rates and property rates are all going up, electric and water are going higher. Income is shrinking but outgoings are sky-rocketing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to balance whether running a business here is feasible and the [state of the] high street is not helping.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we first opened I thought Bearwood was thriving but now it is falling off. I fear having seen what happened in 2008 [with the financial crisis] and the impact it had. Shutters were down and Bearwood attracted the wrong crowds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like a few years ago it seemed to be going in the right direction but now it is going in completely the wrong direction.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are fearing the same, there\u2019s definitely a crisis going on. \u201cBearwood used to be very beautiful. Everything was available, you didn\u2019t need to go anywhere else. It had everything but that time has gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I wasn\u2019t a business owner here and all I saw was takeaways and 24\/7 shops then what reason do I have to come here?\u201d<\/p>\n
The rumours that Bearwood will be losing its Poundland store and the upcoming closure of its Halifax branch meant the high street was being dealt even bigger blows with no signs of letting up. But while economic woes were forcing even national chains and high street \u2018staples\u2019 to question their future in Bearwood, the mountains of litter, continuous fly-tipping, and constant shoplifting was also putting visitors off.<\/p>\n
Imran Khan, owner of nearby Carpet Mill, said his car had been broken into twice this year and he was forced to remove display rolls from the front of his shop with thieves often running off with hundreds of pounds worth of stock. \u201cThe good, decent people are being driven away. If branches like Poundland and Halifax are going, what does that say about the area? You see a decline on the high street when even the big companies are going.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd there\u2019s nothing in these 24\/7 shops under \u00a35 so how are they paying their rent? If they are 24\/7, they are going to attract the people, there\u2019s going to be lots of loitering and the crime and begging.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe area is completely in decline. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen in a couple of years but it really is on a decline. It\u2019s an unfortunate, sad story. It\u2019s a decent area. You cross the road into Harborne and it\u2019s a completely different area, it\u2019s a different world.\u201d<\/p>\n
But while the list of issues in Bearwood was mounting for many traders, it was a different story for cafe owner Harji Kaur, who runs Cafe Craft further down Bearwood Road. She said: \u201cI only work here, I don\u2019t live here but it\u2019s the best I\u2019ve seen it in 21 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the shop units are full at least, it\u2019s better than boarded up. That must be a good thing. I can\u2019t say it\u2019s bad because that is not what I see, maybe others think that, but I don\u2019t agree.\u201d<\/p>\n
The increase in HMOs has also proved to be a problem for Bearwood councillor Bob Piper who told a Sandwell Council planning meeting this week that the influx was turning the area into a slum.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you drive on to places as far as Bearwood, you\u2019ll see, it\u2019s turning into a slum. There are great piles of waste because the planning inspector has approved something like 60 of these [HMO] properties on Bearwood Road.\u201d<\/p>\n
This had followed objections from residents in Bearwood over another late-night off-licence, which was approved by Sandwell Council this week, who said smashed glass bottles, drug paraphernalia and human waste were making Bearwood Road a \u201chealth and safety risk.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imran Khan, owner of Carpet Mill in Bearwood Road, Bearwood Frustrated traders say an influx of 24\/7 off-licences,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[22440,22441,855,9163,22439,748,9444,1354,393,9453,4884,14987,269,12,3669,9440,93,16823,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-604423","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-102-5","9":"tag-102-5-fm","10":"tag-birmingham","11":"tag-black-country","12":"tag-brierley-hill","13":"tag-britain","14":"tag-dab","15":"tag-dudley","16":"tag-england","17":"tag-fm","18":"tag-great-britain","19":"tag-halesowen","20":"tag-music","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-online","23":"tag-radio","24":"tag-sport","25":"tag-stourbridge","26":"tag-uk","27":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115641893550158980","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}