KSS – protecting shared time for families and communities
We have now hosted the Keep Sunday Special campaign – an alliance of retailers, trades unions and faith and community groups – for over 20 years. One of our mantras is that ‘time is the currency of relationships’ and we remain convinced that people value the rhythm and benefits of a day where efforts are made to protect shared time for family and community relationships. A foundational piece of research for the campaign which we commissioned was an analysis of the national Time Use Survey which revealed the impact of weekend working on time with children. Read it here.
Keep Sunday Special was started in 1985 to campaign against a proposed deregulation of Sunday trading in England and Wales. Its founder, Dr Michael Schluter, set up and ran the campaign as a conventional secular civil society organisation which had supporters from all political parties, from private businesses and the Trade Unions, and members of all faiths and of none. KSS enjoyed great success in its initial campaign. The Shops Bill of 1986 was defeated in the Westminster Parliament – only the second time since 1924 that a government bill was defeated at second reading. We have continued to campaign on the issue with our main campaign partners, the Association of Convenience Stores and USDAW (the shopworkers union) with one highlight being defeating government proposals for deregulation in March 2016. As part of this we worked with them to commission an independent family test of the government’s proposals.
You can keep up to date with recent developments at Keep Sunday Special’s Facebook page.