Fruit and veg shop left without answers after suspension of Reform UK councillor who vowed to help

Cllr Tom Pickup's absence means one business has been left waiting for answers

Hello and welcome to The Lancashire Lead.

Given the nature of some of the comments in the Whatsapp community he was found to be a part of, you wouldn’t necessarily expect county councillor Tom Pickup to have gone out of his way to find a solution for a fruit and veg shop with the name Al Salam Food Stores.

And yet that’s exactly what has happening before his suspension in November, with the Reform councillor and an independent councillor working together to try to find a happy ending for a Preston business concerned about the future.

But with his suspension, the issue has not been picked up by anyone else at County Hall - and it doesn’t look like anyone is in any real rush to do so.

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Fruit and veg shop left without answers after suspension of Reform UK councillor who vowed to help

Ayub Ada and County Cllr Lavalette outside Al Salam in Deepdale. Credit: The Lancashire Lead

By Luke Beardsworth

The ongoing investigation against a former Reform UK councillor at County Hall has left one business in Preston forgotten.

Al-Salam Food Stores is on Holmrook Road in Deepdale and the outdoor shelving had been a fixture of the site for the best part of two decades.

But that all changed when enforcement officers from Lancashire County Council determined the shelving display was causing an obstruction and, after an undisclosed number of complaints, removed it all.

Efforts from the owner, along with his councillor at County Hall Michael Lavalette, to find a resolution to the issue ultimately fell on deaf ears.

Ayub Ada, who manages the store, told me in October: “We do very well. If anyone local had any problems with us, they would have come to us to complain. I said we can do something about it but they just said everything has to go.”

He said that the changes to the store, which is thought to be very popular at least in part due to the sheer variety of produce available, placed 14 jobs at risk.

And Cllr Lavalette said it was ‘health and safety gone mad’ and that ‘common sense isn’t winning’.

All of which caught the eye of Reform’s Cllr Tom Pickup who, in response to reporting around the issue, vowed to visit the store and see if anything could be done.

The Lancashire Lead understands that the visit went ahead in November and that Cllr Pickup felt the decision was wrong and the business should be allowed to continue with its shelving display.

But then on November 19, Cllr Tom Pickup was suspended by Reform UK for his role in a Whatsapp leak where he suggested the party would be more ‘hardline’ on immigration than they were showing to the public.

Other messages posted in the group included strong anti-Islam sentiments, and talk of stockpiling weapons to commit domestic terrorism. Cllr Pickup said those are views he does not agree with and that he was not aware were being shared in the group.

He is therefore sitting as an independent and The Lancashire Lead understands that the Reform UK investigation into Cllr Pickup is ongoing.

But a letter from Cllr Lavalette to the Cllr Stephen Atkinson, Reform UK’s leader at Lancashire County Council has gone unanswered.