Taking place at the Riviera International Conference Centre, the 250 delegates from across the UK pledged to take positive action to ensure the future survival of their communities and called on their ruling body, the National Executive Committee to see what more could be done to help members who are the victims of violent crime.

Guest speaker MP Nick Hurd echoed their call. He said: “We have lost a quarter of our post office network, we have lost 30,000 community retailers. This has led to a huge cost to quality of life, cost to the character of the community, cost to the environment and cost to the local economy.

“This act sends a message to communities that it is worth getting involved because you can change things.”

Mr Hurd urged newsagents to help drive change by pressurising their local councils, mobilising their customers and sitting on local citizen panels.

All delegates voted in favour of a motion calling on the Federation to do whatever it could to energise the impetus created by the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 to protect the future of local communities and independent retailers.

The rise in violent crime against newsagents was another key motion discussed.

Manchester newsagent Shumaila Malik said more and more NFRN members were becoming the victims of horrific crimes while Adrian Watts from Rossendale said he knew of two newsagents who had recently been attacked with machetes and reminded conference of Liverpool newsagent Abdul Saeed al-Selwi who had been murdered in his shop the week before.

With pic – of MP Nick Hurd addressing the National Federation of Retail Newsagents at their annual conference in Torquay Ensuring the future of local communities and helping newsagent victims of violent crime were key issues under the spotlight at the National Federation of Retail Newsagents’ annual conference in Torquay.