I’ve been involved in retail for as long as I can remember. From my first proper job as a Saturday boy in a menswear store in Lewisham through my days as a market trader in Camden Lock and Greenwich to being co-founder of a national high street chain that started with a small store in Oxford selling silver jewellery. and grew into a national chain trading in 6 of country’s major retail locations, including London’s prestigious Covent Garden.

In that time I saw almost as many ups as I did downs. I’ve half jokingly said that I spent 20 years building the business and then another 10 trying extricating it from the failing high street. Like so many other retailers who entered the high street during the boom years in the early 1990s, I fell foul of the simultaneous boom in commercial property development. So many new malls were opened in the 90s and early 2000s it was difficult to keep up and I opened stores in some of the most iconic examples such as the New Bullring in Birmingham and Bluewater in Kent.

The other boom at the time was in business rates, which along with rents skyrocketed through that period as institutional landlords, mostly backed by large pension funds, cashed in on the retail bubble ploughing millions into new shiny malls based on the emerging US model. It was great while it lasted and we all became caught up in the heady days of seemingly limitless opportunities. But we soon discovered there were limits.

The Financial crash in 2008 gave us all a pretty sharp reality check and things soon started to become far less buoyant and rents that had been agreed on the back of rude profit margins started to look far less tenable as turnovers started to fall.

There soon followed a series of frantic rounds of renegotiation with landlords who themselves were facing the prospect of huge hole in their new developments as retailers started to fall over with alarming regularity. In many cases we were able to come to mutual agreements to keep us trading at the shopping malls looking full, but the one thing that couldn’t be re-negotiated were business rates. Set as they were, by the central valuation office, and administered by local authorities, they were completely devoid of any chance of concession unless you had an understanding council. In my experience their understanding was rather limited, and after 5 years as a local councillor myself I now understand more about why that was.

So we were all caught in a perfect storm that only a few managed to emerge from. My business was one of the luckier ones as I managed to negotiate deals that gave us breathing space. But I could see the writing on the wall and it was telling me to get out of the high street and decamp to the internet where so many of our competitors were lurking. Thereby hangs another very long story.

But suffice to say I have an intimate understanding of the plight of the high street, in fact much more intimate than I would prefer. For that reason one of my personal priorities as a fresh faced new MP would be to push for a new system of business rates or local high street taxation. Other things like rent controls and use classes would also be high on the agenda, but none of this will be an easy fix for an industry in the doldrums after so many years in decline. But I know from my own experience that smaller independents are both the lifeblood of local high streets whilst also being the most vulnerable.

In terms of the dreaded business rates, I think I could take elements from the land tax approach of the Green party and add in some aspect of a local purchase tax as seen in the USA. Such a tax would be far more progressive and have more respect for the ability of businesses to pay such an additional tax. That would give a far greater connection between the local community, local authorities and the retailers themselves. If all retailers did well then they would all reap the benefits.

I don’t really have the answer to full business rates reform, but I’ve been campaigning for a better system for over 10 years. I would advocate a situation where we involved existing high street retailers in the process of finding a solution. There have been past attempts at doing this, but very few, if any, involved small independent retailers. I think that was a mistake.

The Labour Party have boldly announced that they would scrap the current business rates system, but they haven’t said what they would replace it with. I’ve been here before many times, and both Labour and the Tories have frequently promised reform but never delivered on that. One of the biggest reason is that business rates are a virtually guaranteed income for government bringing in over £13bn a year. Even if the premises are empty, the landlord cops for the bill so it’s a win-win for Westminster. So any new system is likely to be just as iniquitous and damaging, especially to smaller operators.

I think there is a way of developing a system of local high street taxation that could benefit all sides of the equation, including the consumer. Just scrapping the business rates system with no plan for what would replace it is not a solution, yet its the current proposal from the part that is most likely to form the next government in a few weeks. If I was in Westminster I’d hope to be able to provide a far better insight into the problems on the high street and how to engage with the people who face those problems every day.

I’d like to see genuine consultation with high street stakeholders, including landlords and local councils, about the best way forwards. As a long term retailer, having moved from being a small business, through a larger expansion and back to being a ‘born again independent’, I’d like to be involved in that process. But I guess it remains to be seen what the outcome is on July 4th.

I’ve just published a video I made during a recent visit to Bicester with some thoughts on how we can work towards a better system of high street business taxation and help to repair our broken high streets and you can watch that by clicking here.

If you’re a retailer or just someone who enjoys browsing physical shops, I’d suggest you vote for someone like me who has the experience to make that a viable possibility again. Retail is at the heart of every village, town and city and needs political support to make it vibrant again. Many politicians claim to have the answer but few of them have been on the inside of the industry. I think that needs to change. I’d like to change it.