"Anyone walking through the streets of Leicester cannot fail but notice boarded up shops, closed warehouses and vacant manufacturing units. Yet if you open up the business pages of the Leicester Mercury you will see smiling faces, glossy adverts and positive articles of shoppers crowding the Leicester Highcross. Away from the City, save for the odd mention of the Foxes or Leicester Tigers there is little or no coverage of Leicester.ranking behind our neighbours of Nottingham and Coventry in terms of Profile. We are very much becoming in effect a 'forgotton city' A Leicester Business. com we see an urgent need to tell it how it is , to tackle issues others shy away from to stop this march to obscurity and oblivion ."
Business Leaders in Leicester universally condemned Leicester City Councillors for considering a move to the Leicester Mercury Buildings.
As Councils throughout England are making strenuous efforts to entice Businesses to locate into their cities , Leicester City Council seems to be actively encouraging one of the biggest employers to move out of the City with a resultant loss of hundred of local jobs.
Accountant Mr Matthew Woods of MJ Woods Accountancy who has examined the financial implications called the proposed move “Short sighted”. The council does not seem to have factored in the loss of business rates the Daily Mail Group is currently paying and also the amount of spending that will be lost to the City with the loss of these jobs .
The loss to Leicester will not stop there. Shops and businesses near the current Council Head Quarters are fearful for the implications to their trade and many may be forced to shut their doors for good. Don Gorgon who runs and manages a hairdresser on Welford Road thinks the move may be the final straw for small businesses in the area who are already struggling in the current recession. “You would think that councillors would try and help local people in the current economic climate. This just feels like a kick in the teeth”
There is a whiff of something underhand about all of this. The Mercury has been quietly pushing this agenda for many months, on behalf of the Daily Mail Group who wish to sell their site for tens of millions of pounds and it seems that no expense has been spared in the lobbying that has gone on behind the backs of local people. It is also unclear why the Council has not looked at currently unoccupied sites of which there is a long list all round the City, such as the former GE building, which could help to revive a a deprived part of the City and provide much needed employment to local construction companies.