A café in Dartford town centre says it's been forced to shut up shop for good following a long-running roadworks programme which has starved it of customers.
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00:00We've got roadworks basically non-outside the shop, that's removed 85% of my trade.
00:07I've lost all my morning trade and most of my lunchtime trade,
00:10and it's no longer able to sustain that up for any time to keep paying the bills.
00:18Customers just can't get here anymore.
00:20The roadworks are on now till the end of March, and that's only phase two,
00:25and there's another two more phases with no timescales given.
00:28If customers are coming by car, they have to wait in the long queues
00:33and then have to do a detour to get in and out,
00:36and it's just taking them forever so that they don't have time,
00:39especially if they've gone to breakfast break or lunch break.
00:42People walking, if they're coming further around from Dartford,
00:46they're instructed basically not to come past the shop.
00:51And if they do decide to come to the shop, there's a long route again for them to walk around,
00:56and it's just cutting down on their time when your shop is open basically for breakfast and lunches,
01:01and usually that's a limited time.
01:03The shop doesn't take a massive amount of money, but I'm looking at probably about £800 a week.
01:12The shop doesn't make a massive amount of money.
01:14It's never been a big earner. It's not been about earning money,
01:18but when it can't cover its costs when it used to be able to,
01:24and when the road work started, there was that instant drop.
01:27It's a very difficult decision.
01:29It's still in the early stages of the business. It's only been running two and a half years,
01:34so now should be the time I'm starting to claw back a bit of the investment,
01:39and that's just not happening. It's going the other way, and it's going fast the other way,
01:44and that's what's made the decision because of the lack of trade.
01:49And it has other effects, i.e. mental health, things like that.
01:53You're struggling to pay your bills because of the effects of the road works,
01:59so you have to make these decisions sometimes you don't want to make.