§ Mr. LlwydTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many independent petrol retailers have operated in England and Wales in each of the past five years. [32236]
§ Mr. WilsonThe Institute of Petroleum's (IP) annual "UK Retail Marketing Survey" (last published in March 2001) provides data on the total number of petrol retail outlets in operation in the UK.
The following table, using the IP data, shows the number of petrol retail outlets in operation in England and Wales which were not branded either by a major oil company or a hypermarket chain and thus provides some measure of the number of independent retailers. Dealers who sell major oil company branded fuel are excluded by this method. In the last three of these years, some sites 1069W have been identified as "unbranded", and are identified separately in the table. In the year 2000, no regional breakdown of the unbranded sites was given.
Branded Unbranded Total England 1996 3,056 — 3,056 1997 3,741 — 3,741 1998 2,709 295 3,004 1999 2,860 468 3,328 2000 2,387 1468 2,855 Wales 1996 359 — 359 1997 224 — 224 1998 239 112 351 1999 208 134 342 2000 172 1134 306 1 On the 2000 survey, no regional breakdown of unbranded sites was given. As the UK total of unbranded sites was virtually unchanged, (1999:867, 2000:866), it has been assumed for the purposes of the table that the unbranded numbers in England and Wales were also unchanged.