Let's Save The High Street

In the Sunday Express, possibly this country's most in-demand freelance, Neil Clark, writes: 

Woolworths. Littlewoods. Allders. Clinton Cards. And now Jessops. Last week the photography chain became the latest in a growing list of familiar names to disappear from our high streets.

Politicians tell us how concerned they are about “saving the high street” but although there have been initiatives aplenty (the Coalition has pledged a £5.5million package of support for 400 high streets in response to the 2011 Portas Review) the situation seems to be getting worse. In November, figures revealed one in nine shops in UK town centres was empty.

Once they were the hub of the community. Remember the scene at the beginning of the Dad’s Army film when George Mainwaring, the bank manager, walks down Walmington-on-Sea High Street and greets the baker, Jones the butcher, Hodges the greengrocer and Frazer the funeral director, all getting ready to open up for the day? Many high streets today resemble ghost towns of the old American West.

The problem is not just empty units but homogenisation.

As late as 30 years ago, the high streets in our major towns and cities were different from one another. There were department stores which existed only in that particular place, for example Schofields of Leeds or Pearson Bros of Nottingham. But from the Eighties onwards the big chains began to take over. Soon our town and city centres started to look the same. As chain outlets have grown, so the independently owned shops have declined.

The situation in Britain is in stark contrast to continental Europe. One of the first things to strike you in other European countries is that there are still plenty of individually owned shops and that each town or city centre is different. Yes, there are chains but the balance between chains and independents seems to be a much better one.

Vibrant high streets with lots of independently owned outlets help create a better community atmosphere. My wife and I once stopped for a drink in a small bar in Brussels. The owner, a middle-aged lady named Martine, served us and before long we were chatting to the locals. The atmosphere was so friendly that it felt as if we’d been invited into somebody’s home. You don’t really get that kind of feeling in Britain’s identikit chain-owned pubs.

In the rest of Europe you’ll still find shops which have largely disappeared from the UK high street: haberdashers, ironmongers, tobacconists, glove shops and stores selling old stamps and coins. Browsing round them is a real delight and reminds us of what it used to be like back home. If other European countries have managed to maintain their high streets as interesting places, why have we allowed ours to decline?

To resuscitate our town centres radical action is needed, particularly in relation to rents and rates. Rents tend to go in only one direction, upwards, regardless of how the shop is performing or the state of the economy. The Government needs to intervene to regulate rents or, if the landlord is a local authority, the council should either freeze or cut rents for independent stores with the Government making up the shortfall in income. In 2012 business rates rose more than in any other time in the past 20 years and they are due to rise by a further 2.6 per cent in April. It’s not a level playing field. “Out-of-town and online retailers pay considerably lower rates for warehousing facilities whereas ‘prime retail’, our high streets, pay massively more,” says Clare Rayner, author of The Retail Champion.

A freeze or better still a cut in rates for high street stores is needed and for rates to be linked to turnover. Reviving town centres would greatly benefit communities. Research has found that for every £1 spent locally, between 50-70p is recirculated into the local economy, as opposed to as little as 5p spent out-of-town or online.

Our high streets have been hit hard by out-of-town developments, by supermarkets selling a wider range of goods and by the boom in online retailing. We can’t do much about the latter but we could impose a moratorium on out-of-town schemes and restrict the goods supermarkets sell.

Britain’s high streets are in a perilous state. However with the right action, we still have time to save them.