The key idea of “A Level Up” is to promote the environmentally-friendly use of both local high streets and largely UK-sourced foodstuffs where all the workers involved are paid at least a genuine living wage.
Of course the Living Wage Foundation already has 7,000 or so UK companies signed up to their scheme, but this idea is to instead “Kitemark” specific products so that the consumer has a choice whether to pay the extra cost in the same way as they do with products which take account of animal welfare or environmental considerations such as “Organic”, “Free Range”, etc. It is thus almost a UK-centric version of “Fair Trade” products which are concerned with the welfare of largely overseas workers.
Partly to mitigate the risk of Supermarkets, etc, profiteering by marking up “A Level Up” kitemarked products and partly to achieve the other aim of the scheme, increase high street footfall, government-accredited “A Level Up” stores (sort of centralised UK farmer’s markets) and restaurants would be located in vacated local high street premises around the country, helping both to rejuvenate the high street and provide living-wage employment to unemployed service sector staff. Providers of “A Level Up” produce should also be able to provide better-paid rural jobs for some of these workers.
Dependent on premises availability, it may also be possible to combine “A Level Up” stores and restaurants with an updated version of an Internet cafe, which provides both a zoned but open-plan cafe area for casual working and (perhaps upstairs) bookable individual booths with associate communal printers, etc, for “Zoom” and “Team” calls and tasks requiring concentration. This could offer the increasing army of workers-from-home somewhere more local than their central office to venture to and experience some social interaction and thus aid both their physical and mental welfare.
For the scheme to retain it’s environmental credentials it would be desirable for the premises to offer nearby secure bicycle storage and preferably parking and charging for electric cars. In this context, just turning ordinary parking spaces over to electric is, at least in the short term, merely likely to reduce high street footfall. New, preferably free, spaces for electric cars are what’s required until the take-up of electric vehicles is far greater than at present.
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