PEOPLE who are worried about the decline of local shops and businesses in Welwyn Hatfield can find out how to take action at a meeting next week.

Local Works, an organisation that is lobbying the Government to do more to preserve local businesses, is holding a public meeting in Welwyn Garden City on Wednesday to discuss what it calls "ghost town Britain".

Local Works is behind the Sustainable Communities Bill, a piece of proposed legislation that has the support of more than half of the MPs in the House of Commons. It has also been backed by the Women's Institute, Postwatch, the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, the Co-operative Group and Friends of the Earth.

Steve Shaw from Local Works said: "Community decline is hitting hard everywhere in the last decade Britain lost a fifth of its post offices, a quarter of its independent grocery stores and a quarter of its bank branches.

"This bill will mean citizens and local governments of Welwyn Hatfield deciding their own indicators of sustainability and setting their own targets.

"It will turn the world upside down, with central government being driven by councils and their communities. The people of Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield, not civil servants in Whitehall, know best how to solve their own problems."

Welwyn Hatfield MP Grant Shapps, a supporter of the bill, will be a speaker at the meeting.

He said: "Welwyn and Hatfield is a thriving community but many of its local services and businesses are under threat. Local communities are being undermined in a whole series of damaging and avoidable ways.

"I am particularly concerned by the general reduction of small independent shops and businesses locally and the subsequent effect this has on the local economy of our area. I am also concerned at the alarming rate of post office closures. I welcome the efforts of the Local Works campaign in highlighting this issue and the need for action, both at local and national level."

The meeting is at Woodhall Community Centre in Cole Green Lane, Welwyn Garden City, from 7.30pm until 9.30pm on Wednesday.