Some of your readers may have seen the Mary Portas programme about her Save Our Shops campaign in Tewkesbury. Action like this depends upon the active participation of the majority of independent retailers in a town, and fortunately Royston is not in as

Some of your readers may have seen the Mary Portas programme about her "Save Our Shops" campaign in Tewkesbury. Action like this depends upon the active participation of the majority of independent retailers in a town, and fortunately Royston is not in as bad a state as some of the other towns shown on that programme.

In February, we in the local Chamber became so concerned about the situation of retailers in Royston that we sent out a letter with some ideas and a questionnaire to all the independent retailers in the town, to see what they felt could be done here in Royston. Sadly, in spite of visits to many retailers, we got only a 13% response rate and this was not enough support for us to develop a campaign.

There are undoubtedly many reasons why retailers did not respond at the time, from survey fatigue and adverse weather through to sheer exhaustion and depression. However if more retailers are now interested, please could I ask them, through your pages to contact us? They can e-mail Mike Gowen of The Stationery Cupboard, Royston on mike@stationerycupboard.com

Meantime we continue to work behind the scenes to support people who want to move into closed shops, including those who may be interested in the Woolworths site, and to press for the town to be kept clean and attractive-looking.

Stephen J Larcombe

Chairman

Royston & District Chamber of Commerce