SIOP y Pethe is an Aberystwyth institution, and it’s struggling for survival. In 1967, it blazed a trail as the first shop in Wales to sell all things Welsh — from books in Welsh and books about the country, to Welsh music and greetings cards. It became the inspiration for similar shops that emerged all over Wales.

Now, plummeting trade during the two years of the pandemic has left it on a knife-edge. Aled Rees, the owner since 2015, tells of “dire” damage as a result of Covid-19, with daily takings sometimes less than it takes to pay staff.

For him to know he’s not alone is cold comfort. That other shopkeepers in the town are in similar predicaments merely underlines the problem.

In February last year, with Aberystwyth and other towns reeling from shop-closures stemming from the pandemic and from the online buying obsession, I suggested radical action to stop the rot.

I proposed an immediate and permanent total scrapping of business rates for locally and regionally-owned town centre shops - an unashamedly discriminatory tool to underpin an animated resurgence of rural high streets.

I argued that, in Aberystwyth, for example, local businesses should be enabled to move into empty shops in prime positions, and that established locally-owned outlets, many locked in a perennial struggle to pay rates from meagre takings, must also be freed of their rates shackles.

Nothing happened. Nothing changed. Ceredigion MS Elin Jones was broadly supportive, saying absentee landlords should be persuaded to give rent-free, start-up opportunities and “to re-purpose the larger premises to suit smaller businesses…” But she was silent on my call for a total scrapping of business rates for locally and regionally-owned town centre shops, even though it’s pretty clear that, unless the Welsh government agrees to such a scheme, rural high streets could face being edged ever closer to commercial annihilation.

Thus, more than a year later, hard-hit shopkeepers continue to face stress and uncertainty. They hear much analysis of the problem, they witness no shortage of hand-wringing. Action, however, continues to be in short supply.

I suggested that dramatic business rates reform would, in parallel, present a vast opportunity for Aberystwyth to revitalise, and essentially to refashion, its identity, a move which could bring untold cultural and commercial advantages. This would be Aberystwyth and other towns recognising that a successful future would rest on…being different. No longer near carbon-copies of, predominantly, character-free high streets seen across Wales, and Britain as a whole, but places of real individuality.

For Aberystwyth specifically, I argued, a genuinely exciting possibility hovered in the wings, one that would put the town centre-stage in terms of cultural and artistic distinction and ensure year-round tourism, and the spending that would go with that.

I make no apology now for reiterating my call — in this column in December — for a major new Aberystwyth art gallery based on the National Library of Wales’s huge stash of publicly-owned paintings. This collection is, after all, one of the finest anywhere in Britain, its 2,000-odd oil paintings alone being almost equal in number to those at either the National Museum of Wales or London’s National Gallery. It includes the world’s biggest collection of works by Kyffin Williams as well as paintings by Turner, Gainsborough, Augustus and Gwen John and numerous other pictures of enormous cultural and social interest to Wales.

This is a vast public asset currently unseen and, therefore, wasted. Released from storage in the depths of the national library, it would play a huge part in transforming Ceredigion’s economic prospects, while greatly enriching cultural life.

After a period of silence, the library is now signalling its strong support for the idea, Pedr ap Llwyd, chief executive and librarian, telling me he is “eager to support initiatives that will make our collections and resources more accessible and available to individuals and communities.”

He adds: “We would make every effort to support the initiative you describe and lend you items from the collections in accordance with our policy, apart from where the availability, condition or security of the object prevent us from doing so. I absolutely agree with you that participation in arts, culture and heritage can bring huge benefits to individuals and communities. Culture should be accessible to all as a point of principle…”

Already, in partnership with Pembrokeshire County Council, the library is lending art-works to a small gallery within the council’s newish Glan-yr-afon public library in Haverfordwest. Its involvement sets a helpful precedent for a new, much bigger, Aberystwyth gallery. Sadly, the library is currently backing away from my suggestion that, enabled by specifically-awarded project funding outside regular library budgets, it could take charge of a project to establish an Aberystwyth gallery.

So will Ceredigion council, inspired by Pembrokeshire’s enthusiasm, instead take the lead? Momentarily, hopes edge upwards, with the authority’s leader, Ellen ap Gwynn, saying such a gallery “would be a great addition to our cultural tourist offer in Aber and Ceredigion”. Then comes the downer: “I doubt whether we would have the capacity to take on such a big project at this time.”

The question arises: actually, how seriously do these two publicly-funded organisations take the significant economic threats facing Ceredigion’s biggest town?