Comment - Saving the high street

Rob Lucas
Chief Executive
0161 233 7676
[email protected]

The high street shop is firmly in line for life support. The diagnosis is clear. The treatment is in popular dispute.

We are collectively concerned about the future of the high street. It has had a long and successful run as part of the ‘place’ that is inseparable from the health of our communities. Our towns and cities are defined by their centres.

The high street shop is facing reductions in consumer spending, crippling business rates and the impact of attractive, alternative ways to buy - be that out-of-town or online. It is not keeping up or fighting back fast enough.

The Government jumped on the celebrity bandwagon and asked the retail sainted Mary of Portas to take a look at the problem and come up with some ideas.

She produced a mixed dose of remedies. These included new vision, business rate reform, planning flexibility, town teams, street markets, responsible landlords and closing down on out-of-town.

She also wandered into populist, potentially eye-catching ideas from the world of marketing, but which were not sufficiently commercial. Good TV though.

The Government wavered; Portas pilots will not make it to a series and there was more than a little touch of theatre and marketing rather than structural economics1 and enlightened planning.

The most problematic high streets were never going to be cured by the Portas prescription and the successful ones didn’t need it. Expecting everywhere to be able to become a Kensingtonton High Street or a Ledbury or Sherborne was never going to work.

Mary complained and attacked lack of Government belief and the decision-making of Pickles - especially for the Tesco Margate massacre.

Now we have a new remedy to treat the high street malaise from former Iceland and Wickes retailer, Bill Grimsey.

Risking (and getting) the wrath of Mary, he has a little unfairly dismissed her work as PR for a TV series and ‘nostalgic’. He has delivered his own ‘Alternative Future for the High Street’2.

A more studious exercise in saving shops, it promotes 31 recommendations for action built around vision, driving change, mixed use, technology, fairness and finance, community, and management processes. There are some interesting ideas and angles here, although most are not new and some echo Portas.

The vision thing

Our town centres/high streets really do need a sense of vision that breaks out of the failing mould of landlord inaction, local authorities’ ‘change of use’ intransigence and the inequitable financial burden of business rates.

Creating and delivering this vision is beyond local authorities alone. Genuine stakeholder partnerships and some futurology would be welcome.

High streets and town centres as ‘community-hubs’ supported by town planning

This is their long-established but seemingly forgotten role. Have our local planners been hiding deep in the undergrowth? We have too many shops and need to lose many while retaining a prime zone.

A town centre plan

A commercially framed town plan within a business plan context. Clearly defined prime central areas are possible within the system now. This adds some welcome commercial discipline.

Business rate reform

Essential and eminently deliverable. Held back by Government inaction and local authorities clinging to income as central funding falls.

Wired towns and networked high streets

Some entertaining and progressive thinking for the tech savvy (and beyond the Grimsey stereotypes of ‘Mum’).

Better funding

Use of CIL; a good idea. However, taxing national retailers and leisure companies or imposing costs on active landlords will act to constrain the investment that high streets seek. Isn’t viability tricky enough now?

Car parking

A long-running debate. Two free hours would be welcome if it can be reconciled with sustainable transport objectives in favour of public transport. In reality, this is a financial issue for cash-strapped local authorities who are often at odds with their customers.

Town Centre Commissions

Another name for town centre partnerships, we know, although operating more formally in a commercial business plan. These are promoted as alternatives to ‘failed’ Portas town teams. Worth a pilot if the essential private sector role of landlords and retailers is not squeezed out.

Local authorities and even Town Centre Commissions are not necessarily expert in retail development and asset management and would need to go beyond the town centre management/town team role. All will struggle where the market condition is at its most challenging.

The model of a high street/town centre in single ownership with local authority management post CPO activity, mocking that of a single owned shopping centre, is not a realistic way forward. More diverse Town Centre Commissions may be.

Diversity and real-life enterprise must be retained.

The vanishing high street?

The high street as a vital and viable place at the centre of our communities is at risk of being lost. The Portas plan has not arrested the decline. The Grimsey alternative has more prospect. What is clear is that all stakeholders must play their full part with creative thinking and practice. A chance for planners to plan.

1 As demonstrated in Robert Peston Goes Shopping TV series
2 www.vanishinghighstreet.com/the-grimsey-review/

Download

You can read the full article as a downloadable pdf here.

Saving the high street