Opinion — shops and services opening 24 hours a day

In a world where people work irregular hours and shop online at midnight, some argue that physical shops and services should be free to open around the clock. While I accept that longer hours suit certain businesses and customers, I largely disagree that unrestricted opening should become the norm.

Supporters of 24-hour trading point to convenience and choice. Nurses, taxi drivers and factory workers on night shifts currently struggle to visit a bank or buy groceries during conventional hours, and a supermarket that never closes would serve them as well as it serves office workers. Businesses, moreover, could spread demand more evenly, easing the queues that make Saturday shopping an ordeal.

However, the costs of this freedom would fall mainly on staff and on residential neighbourhoods. Shops that open all night must be staffed all night, and the people filling those shifts are usually the lowest paid, with the least power to refuse. Studies of night work consistently link it to poor sleep, disrupted family life and higher rates of illness. Residents living beside a 24-hour store or gym, meanwhile, would face deliveries, slamming car doors and bright lighting at three in the morning. There is also a question of proportion: the demand for a haircut or a mortgage appointment at 4 a.m. is vanishingly small, so most late-night opening would waste energy and staff time in half-empty premises.

A more balanced approach is to permit extended hours where genuine demand exists, such as pharmacies and petrol stations near hospitals and motorways, while retaining limits elsewhere and compensating night staff properly. In my view, a shared rhythm of opening and closing is not an outdated restriction but a way of protecting workers and communities from a race to stay open that benefits almost no one.