Covid roadmap blues for Ledbury s pubs and shops ledburyreporter.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ledburyreporter.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
AS planning applications for retail outlets tumble across the UK, because of the Covid crisis, concerns are growing that the face of the High Street is changing, and Ledbury may not be exempt. Nationally, planning applications for new shops have fallen by one fifth recently, and a glance through recent Herefordshire Council planning applications shows that Ledbury town centre is following the downwards trend in this respect. “The various lockdowns have been catastrophic to the retail sector, causing developers to cut their retail development pipeline,” said Boodle Hatfield head of real estate Simon Williams, while speaking of the UK situation.
LEDBURY schools have spoken of “the incredible difficulty” of meeting the challenges of another sudden lockdown, brought in because of the Covid pandemic. And businesses have expressed concern about the impact on the High Street, with one retailer saying the effects this time could be “devastating”. Technical problems with online teaching did not make the start of the lockdown any easier at the John Masefield High School. Andy Evans, headteacher at the Masefield said: “Unfortunately, on the first morning, Microsoft Teams was overloaded across the country with students from the John Masefield and across many other schools unable to hear the teacher, losing the connection intermittently or unable to view the presentation the teacher was showing on the screen.”
LEDBURY being plunged back into Tier 2 restrictions has proved a step too far for one of the town’s most iconic pubs, The Talbot, which is now temporarily closed. The closure came into force ahead of the even stricter Tier 3 regulations, which are currenty now in force. Tighter restrictions come at a time when Covid cases are rising dramatically in the county and in the Ledbury area, although not in Ledbury town itself. Wadworth, the owner of The Talbot, issued a statement on Boxing Day, announcing the closure just as Ledbury moved from Tier 1 to Tier 2, in line with the rest of the county at the time.