I was shocked but not in the least surprised when I found out that two renowned Northwich businesses were closing down.

As someone who used to work in the town centre, a trip to the Seafarer chip shop was my regular Wednesday lunchtime treat and I was a massive fan of the sausages made by Hormbrey’s butchers.

These two much-loved businesses were a part of the Northwich landscape and to see them have to shut up shop is truly sad.

I have no particular insight into what finally forced them to close but I suspect they are victims of the general economic downturn coupled with the very particular problems faced by Northwich. It’s almost a perfect storm that may well engulf other business in the not too distant future.

It would be too easy to blame the Barons Quay development for the ills of the Weaver Square end of town and everyone has perfect vision in hindsight. My own take on that is Barons Quay was the right idea at the wrong time.

When the concept was first conceived by Vale Royal Council, it was mainly considered to be a good thing for the town. It was positive and regenerative and would have gone some way to redress the earlier planning mistakes that had allowed a dual carriageway to cut the town centre in two and had allowed Weaver Square to be built facing inwards, showing its back to the world.

But local government reorganisation and problems with the mines stabilisation project under the Barons Quay car park meant delays to the project. Had it been allowed to crack on as originally envisaged, I think we would all have a better opinion of it.

I also think there was a loss of local authority focus on Northwich when Cheshire West and Cheshire came into being.

My take at the time was that Northwich became the equivalent of the unremarkable and overlooked ‘middle child’.

Chester was obviously the prized ‘first born’ with its Roman walls, history, racecourse and university, while Ellesmere Port was the troubled ‘last born’ that had all the problems and demanded attention.

Poor Northwich was just OK. It was fine. Nothing to really commend it but no real problems either.

And other mistakes were made. Northwich has a riverside that would have been absolutely perfect for some sort café culture development but this was largely ignored. And with it went the chance to enhance Northwich’s reputation as an authentic market town and a place people would want to visit.

Then we had the loss of the Marks and Spencer shop, followed by the Bratts department store. These were hammer blows to Northwich and left a void that has not been filled.

Which brings us to the here and now. The Covid pandemic and subsequent lockdowns forced a lot people to start shopping online, many for the first time, which has piled on even more pressure for those Northwich businesses trying to make their way in a shopping centre that is patently past its sell by date.

Add into that mix a cost of living crisis made much worse by a combination of the disastrous commercial effects of Brexit, Covid, the war in Ukraine and soaring energy prices and rampant inflation. People just don’t have as much money to spend while businesses are simultaneously facing spiralling costs.

And to make a bad situation even worse, along comes former prime minister Liz Truss and her absolutely ludicrous plan to borrow billions for unfunded tax cuts for the rich that sent the money markets into meltdown, forcing up people’s mortgage payments to unsustainable levels.

(Don’t forget, no one was talking about a £50billion fiscal black hole that will have to be plugged by tax rises and new age of austerity before Ms Truss destroyed the economy.)

So yes, people are going to cut back on their discretionary spending and that will have the real-world consequence of tipping some businesses over the edge. This isn’t theoretical or an academic study. We are already seeing the effects in our own town centre.

Some towns will be better placed to weather the storm but too many bad decisions over too many years have left Northwich more vulnerable than it ought to have been.

So my very best wishes to those shops and businesses that are still fighting on. I hope you can weather the storm and come out fighting at the other end.