By late Sunday morning my local supermarket is like a rugby scrum with trolleys. The car park is jammed, people are queueing before they even get inside, and once you are in the aisles it feels like an obstacle course just to reach the milk. It is easily the busiest day of the week here, yet we still have the six hour Sunday trading limit.
Because of Sunday trading laws, the big shops in England and Wales can only open for six hours. In practice that means everyone piles in at the same time. Late morning is rammed, early afternoon is even worse, and by the afternoon the place looks like a plague of locusts has been through, with only artichokes and beetroot left.
In Scotland there are no Sunday trading laws for large shops, so they can open as long as they like, and life seems to carry on perfectly fine.
If supermarkets here could open longer, like on a normal day, people could spread out their shopping and the whole thing would be calmer. Families who spend Saturday at kids sports or activities, and workers who do shifts at the weekend, would have more choice than the current six hour window. Smaller express or local stores are open all day anyway, but they are pricier and do not stock everything, so you end up doing several little shops.
I know the main argument for the current rules is that Sundays should be for people to spend time with their families. But not everyone lives in a family setup, and many people, especially students, part timers, and those looking for extra income, actually prefer to work on Sundays. For some, it is the best day to pick up extra hours without clashing with other commitments.
I just do not see how the current system helps when Sundays are already the busiest.