High hopes for the high street

TO any brave soul who has attempted some high-street shopping in recent months, the findings of a new report on Britain’s town centres will come as no surprise.

According to Urban Pollinators, a rural-regeneration consultancy, high streets need to “bring the magic back”, to become vibrant centres of culture, entertainment and education if town centres are not to become hollowed-out clones, dreary, depressed and deprived of everything that once made them unique.

Britain’s towns have undergone a sea-change over the past decade as shoppers have migrated to edge-of-town retail parks and the internet, while once familiar names have disappeared and the high street has become a dismal succession of downmarket chains such as Poundstretcher, charity shops, fast-food outlets, tattoo parlours and “To Let” signs.

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This is a telling comment on the social and economic state of modern Britain, with the fact that the most expensive, luxury-brand boutiques are bucking the trend emphasising the growing divide between rich and poor.

Yet, as the new report points out, the recession only accelerated long-term trends such as the advance of the internet and the supermarket giants and those who believe that the high street will ever return to what it once was are fooling themselves.

This is a welcome acceptance of reality, but it is not a reason to abandon all hope. There will always be a future for the enterprising retailer prepared to offer quality and service and, with the help of optimism, energy and imagination, the high street can yet be given a new future.

While it may be expecting too much of hard-up local authorities to offer business-rate holidays or free town-centre parking, the Government can help out by tweaking planning policy to make it easier for local people to run pilot schemes in empty properties and for buildings to be converted into low-cost homes, art workshops, skill-teaching centres or anywhere where the public might gather.

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For if, as the Government hopes, it is down to the Big Society to re-energise town centres, the thing that high streets will need, more than anything else, will be people. And at the moment, the reasons for people to be attracted into town centres are fast disappearing.

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