Shops Act 1950 — Opening on Sunday — Travel agency in departmental store — Whether travel agency a shop
The respondent is the occupier of shop premises in South Street, Ilkeston. The premises are a departmental store on the top floor of which the respondent operates a travel agency, comprising a desk or counter. The travel agents’ business includes booking holidays and airline and rail tickets, effecting holiday insurance and hotel reservations, and receiving deposits and the payment of balances due. Informations were preferred against the respondent allegating that on four Sundays it failed to close the premises for the serving of customers contrary to section 47 of the Shops Act 1950. The respondent was convicted and its appeal to the Crown Court was allowed. The prosecutor appealed by way of a case stated contending first that as the department store as a whole was a shop, the opening of any part of it on a Sunday was contrary to the Act, and secondly that the premises of a travel agents are a shop.
Held The appeal was dismissed. 1. Section 50 of the 1950 Act permits a shop to be open on a Sunday for the purpose of carrying out certain trade or business that is not otherwise prohibited under section 47 to take place on Sundays. 2. Section 74 of the 1950 Act defines a “shop” as including any premises where retail trade or business is carried on. The adjective “retail” is primarily applicable to the sale of goods and if a business providing services, such as a travel agency, is to be a “retail business”, those services must be in some way connected with goods. Travel agents are plainly comparable with banks, building societies and estate agents rather than with retail shops: the travel agency was therefore not a shop within the meaning of section 47 of the Shops Act 1950.
Lewis v Rogers
(1984) 82 LGR 670 followed and
M & F Frawley Ltd v The Ve-Ri-Best Manufacturing Co Ltd
[1953] 1 QB 318 considered.
Nicholas Patten QC (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard) appeared for the appellant prosecutor; and Lord Irvine QC and David Blunt (instructed by Shacklocks, of Mansfield) appeared for the respondent.
