ANOTHER family business is to disappear from Bedale as its owners feel the pinch of modern trading conditions.

Alan Witty, specialising in the sale and repair of television sets and radios, has been based for the past 31 years in Emgate, but the business will close as soon as the last of the stock has been sold.

It has been owned by Mr Witty, his wife, Margaret, and their son, Phillip, who has run it for the past seven years. Phillip has taken a new job as an engineer in Yorkshire for a London company, fitting monitoring equipment in television sets for market research, while his parents prepare for retirement.

Mr Alan Witty learned the technicalities of radio while serving in the army and developed his skills while working in Bedale for Watson's in the days when many sets ran on accumulator batteries.

He began working for himself in 1963 in South End, in what had been a wooden bungalow, and moved in 1969 to Emgate, once a thriving commercial street in Bedale.

A man with a keen interest in local history, Mr Witty gives slide shows to local organisations featuring views of Bedale in the days when the market place was lined with other family shops which have since disappeared.

He said the family now had to face the fact that its own small business was no longer economically viable because of changes in shopping habits, including the possibility that people were turning to electrical retailers in out-of-town centres.

"Margaret and myself wanted to be out of it anyway, but it was a matter of ensuring a secure future for Phillip.

"The situation has got gradually worse over the past ten years for small businesses. One of the big problems for us is that prices have come down so much and sets are more reliable so that people are not so concerned about after-sales service as they used to be.

"We have also found that people have been buying sets somewhere else and then coming to us to tune them.

"Business increased until about ten years ago, since when it has gradually gone back down. I don't really know what the cause is. There are so many factors but all the factors seem to be against the small dealer.

"It's sad that this has to happen. You spend a lifetime building up a business and suddenly it's no good."

Mrs Witty added: "We have had some very loyal customers. We have had people who have walked the length of Bedale, past other shops, to get their batteries, but there were just not enough of them."