High Streets continue to die but we’ll all be sorry when they’re gone - Sarah Todd
Almost 7,000 shops have been lost from towns and cities across the country this year already. New data shows that High Streets are in trouble as almost 20 pubs and 38 shops close every week.
It’s not a new phenomenon but one that nobody is getting a grip of.
The figures, compiled by accountancy firm PwC, break the numbers down to 38 shops per day. They don’t just include main streets, but also shopping centres and retail parks.
Planners from 20-odd years ago should be rounded up and put into some specially constructed stocks in the city centres. They probably ordered the bulldozing down of any historic ones remaining. Oh no though, wrong location, nobody would be walking past to throw rotten eggs at them. Also, it would doubtless have to be wet sponges, as eggs would doubtless breach some sort of health and safety bylaw.
Bit harsh? Not in this correspondent’s opinion. Same should be done to those from ratings departments who have taxed the life out of retail premises.
Repeatedly people say shopping is all done online these days. That isn’t entirely true. Figures from Mastercard show there has been a shift back to a bricks and mortar retail experience, particularly from shoppers who say they would prefer to purchase clothing in-store.
As an aside, apart from the convenience of not lugging big bags of heavy items like tins and bottles grocery shopping isn’t the same online either. Time and again supermarket deliveries made to this address have been full of products on their use-by date. There is nothing like choosing an apple, banana, loaf of bread or joint of meat from close quarters.
The worry is that just as people have started to realise that we are missing out on not seeing fresh food or the colours and quality of fabrics - along with popping into a changing room to check the size - all the retailers will have thrown in the towel.
Back when this reporter was her daughter’s age, early 20s, there were boutiques for what used to be billed as ‘occasionwear’. Now finding anywhere selling special clothes is like looking for hen’s teeth. In fact, this isn’t only the case for clothes for weddings or evening events. Everyday items such as a pair of trousers in the right leg length can be incredibly difficult to find, with assistants (if you can find one) sourly spouting ‘you could always look online’.
Entrepreneurs should be encouraged. Anybody with the gumption to give setting up a business a go should be supported. If ideas show promise, their hand should be held by start-up business advisers and they should feel like the Government is willing them to succeed, not just after raiding any takings.
As he has shown for over half a century on subjects such as architecture, farming and the environment King Charles was ahead of the curve on the importance of business development.
It was back in the 1970s, when the UK was struggling with record levels of unemployment and spiralling inflation and it felt like young people were being left behind, that the then Prince of Wales used his Navy severance pay of £7,400 to fund a number of community initiatives. This went on to become The Prince’s Trust, which thankfully is still going strong and is being renamed The King’s Trust.
The enterprise element of the scheme was launched in 1983 and within three years 1,000 young people had been supported to start a business. It’s gone from strength to strength and is such an illustration of the good that can be done when common sense is used to tackle problems.
Talking of common sense, a recent experience at a hospital highlighted the desperate need for the notion of practical nous to be reintroduced to our wards.
There was nobody asking any common-sense questions such as whether patients were cold, thirsty or needing the bathroom.
Of course, they aren’t as important as getting somebody trollied off for a scan or surgery, but they nevertheless matter.
It can seem, while waiting in hospitals, that those who are drunk, on drugs or arrive in handcuffs accompanied by police after scrapping get seen first.
Yes, bring back the archetypal battleaxe of a matron. Never mind more managers and computer systems, we need the character Hattie Jacques played in the much-loved Carry On films to rule with a rod of iron.
To finish back where we started, we need an army of similarly strident personalities to take over our shopping streets before they decline to such an extent that there is no way back for them.
Sad to wonder what history will say about our times when future generations have nothing to wear but internet-ordered polyester monstrosities from China.