4 hours ago
3
High streets have been changing throughout my lifetime (I’m 82 and had a high-street business for more than 20 years) and they have somehow survived with precious little government help (Labour risks election wipeout unless it improves Britain’s high streets, study finds, 28 February). In my postwar rural Essex village, we had three butchers, two newsagents, two bakers, two ironmongers, three general stores (one a dairy) plus a potpourri of haberdashery, hair stylists, two sweet shops and an electrical shop that had every plug and wire known to man.
There was consternation when the dairy went self-service, but soon everyone was shopping with a basket. Then came the grocery chains – the butchers and bakers disappeared, and the main haberdasher closed. But the village adjusted and other enterprises appeared. The next watershed was out-of-town shopping (driven by local government poverty and the temptation of a new village hall in exchange for planning permission for a superstore) that pulled that rug away.
Track your lifetime and see where you were when the changes happened. Then ask yourself one simple question: “Did I support my local high street by using its shops, or did I blithely go to a superstore or online, yet still expect my local traders to be there when I occasionally went into town?”
You can’t subsidise every business because people choose to go elsewhere. Do we want to shop and drink locally or not? Please spare the wringing hands and the blame game about this government. If you want a high street, shop there!
Michael Newman
Shefford, Bedfordshire
The decline of the high street predates austerity by decades. If you encircle towns with retail parks that offer free parking, build houses between them and the bypass (which forces people into cars) and make parking in town centres difficult and expensive, you get urban dystopia, with a few shops that provide the things you can’t buy online. Ipswich is a supreme example of this hollowing out.
The obvious answer is to turn empty shops and the large buildings they occupy into housing, a change of use that councils perversely seem to resist. Housebuilders (and governments that cosy up to them) won’t like it, of course, because they lose their economies of scale. The solution is simple: penalise landlords who leave shops empty and provide incentives for them and for developers to create the homes (and then customers) that we need.
Jeremy Walker
Leiston, Suffolk
It’s no surprise that the future of our high streets is a top issue for communities, but their decline isn’t inevitable – they can adapt and have a bright future. For high streets to thrive they must be reimagined as attractive places that are as unique as the communities they serve.
Historic England’s High Streets Heritage Action Zones programme did just this, bringing more than 60 historic high streets back to life across the country, with £95m of government funding. It showed that working closely with local communities to restore historic shops and celebrate high streets can bring visitors back, reduce vacancy rates, attract investment and create new jobs.
The blueprint from this regeneration programme can be used to save many more. We are working with local partners to fund pilots to create homes in empty high-street buildings.
Claudia Kenyatta and Emma Squire Co-CEOs, Historic England
There is an air of inevitability in what Josh Halliday writes about the decline of high streets (‘You’d be ashamed to bring someone here’: The struggling billionaire-owned high street that shows Reform’s road to No 10, 28 January). Many people I know bemoan the perceived decline of Peterborough city centre, yet don’t visit it. They complain about the lack of shops there, but prefer to go to out-of-town shopping malls.
There is an irony here. I reckon that Peterborough’s city centre population is greater than it has ever has been. Empty offices and shop units are being converted into flats and apartments. Indeed, there is a local joke that if you stand still for more than 10 minutes in the city centre, you’ll be converted into flats. Increasing numbers of people are living in the centre, yet communities are not being forged. Presumably all these new city-centre residents have to buy food – perhaps they’re having home deliveries. Let us hope that this lack of community identity is not storing up problems for the years ahead.
There are organisations such as Peterborough Positive, our local business improvement district, that are certainly making a difference in our city centre. New and independent businesses are gradually arriving, but it’s a long slog. However, the message is clear and simple: if you want your city centre to thrive, then visit and use the businesses that are trying to prosper.
Toby Wood
Vice-chair, Peterborough Civic Society
