A LOYALTY card to encourage shoppers to spend at Oxford’s independent stores could be launched next year.

Oxford City Council is investigating the proposal and business group Rescue Oxford wants the scheme up and running in 2011.

The announcement comes as Oxford featured on a list of “clone towns” dominated by chain stores.

In recent months, small traders have complained that spiralling parking charges, high rents and new city-centre supermarkets are hitting business.

Graham Jones, of Rescue Oxford, said the business group was already looking at whether a city centre loyalty card could help, and how similar schemes worked elsewhere.

He said: “I would hope we could get something in place within a year, but it will take four or five months to really finish doing the research.”

“We need to see how many retailers may be interested. They may have their own ideas, or experiences from elsewhere.”

He added: “Oxford is a tourist city, and a lot of traders depend on visitors for a good part of their turnover.

“Given a lot of them come and go within a few days or a few hours, we want to look at whether a loyalty scheme would work for them too.

“It is probably best to start with just the city centre, but we want to look at whether shops in Summertown or Headington could join later if it is a success.”

Abingdon is launching a loyalty scheme next month, with 24 shops signed up. But Oxfordshire Town Chambers Network director Iain Nicholson said other Oxfordshire towns, including Bicester and Thame, had decided loyalty card schemes were too expensive or difficult to set up.

Julian Tester, of The Book Lover, in Paradise Street, said: “I would have thought if the principle is you can go anywhere with it, some businesses will do well out if it, but others less so.”

But Chris Farren, who chairs the Covered Market Traders’ Association, said offering a universal discount to thousands of shoppers would not prove popular with many traders.

Oxford City Council said it was at the earliest stages of investigating setting up an Oxford version.

  • A loyalty card scheme in Haslemere, Surrey, celebrates its fifth birthday in November.

One of the first schemes in the UK, 7,000 of the town’s 12,000 residents now have the £5 card, offering them discounts in 28 independent shops. Many of them offer discounts or vouchers once £100 is spent in store.

Mayor Melanie Odell said the scheme had proved a success, adding: “It more or less runs itself, and all the shops benefit from the cross-advertising.”