A Croxley woman who runs a popular local café has spoken of the difficulties she and many other small businesses are currently facing.
Linda Anderson runs The Kitchen, a coffee and cake shop on Watford Road. But despite its long-standing popularity in the area, the business is continuing to struggle with ever-increasing bills.
Linda told CROXLEYnews: “It’s the cost-of-living crisis, but also a cost-of-operating crisis, so it’s a double whammy.
“People don’t have as much to spend, and food inflation has been running at 40 per cent. Everything is costing us so much more.
“We’ve had people questioning our prices, and I can understand it; they have my sympathy. People probably think that it’s a lot of money for afternoon tea, but that’s what it’s costing us.
“At the moment, a lot of small businesses are going under. The only reason that I’m still here is because I own the freehold. If I was renting, there is no way I would be able to be here.”
Now, Linda is campaigning for the government to give more help to microbusinesses such as her own.
She added: “When the government changes legislation, they need to consider the impact on microbusinesses and stagger the introduction on some measures, such as the ban on plastic straws, for example.
“A plastic fork might cost eight pence, a wooden one might cost 30 pence. But if you stagger the introduction, by the time you introduce the initiative for smaller businesses, prices will have gone down.”
As part of her work to improve the outlook for microbusinesses, Linda has recently had meetings with figures such as Gagan Mohindra, MP for South West Hertfordshire, which she described as “really good”. She is hopeful that positive changes will be made soon.
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