MADAM,

It is with a deep sense of outrage that I read your headline about the Monmouth County Council (MCC) charging shops like Stephen’s Bookshop and Philip Munday an extra £242.50 just to display their goods and produce on the pedestrianised Church Street pavement.

It is astonishing that the council feels it should add to the immense pressures that shopkeepers are already under from many other factors. Do they really want to ensure that the High Street shops suffer as much as possible?

This money grabbing, short-sighted, mealy-mouthed, dim-witted, unimaginative, dozy, thoughtless and plain stupid council really should be ashamed of itself. It’s always the same, councils like Monmouth target small businesses because they are easy fodder compared to the massive corporates like tax fiddling Amazon or the large supermarket chains.

If MCC really wants to speed up closing all of Monmouth’s High Street shops, they can get some excellent lessons, tips and new ideas simply by all jumping onto a coach and taking a quick trip to Newport town centre and they’ll see how the local Newport City Council did it so effectively and quickly.

To impose a new raft of charges on small traders and retailers is reckless, criminal and plain stupid. MCC should be trying its hardest to help and support small independent traders in Monmouth, not sticking a knife into their backs and twisting it as much as possible. If they do not withdraw this new charge immediately, they will prove themselves to be even bigger fools than what a lot of people already take them for.

Jonathan Cockburn

(Hewelsfield)