Town centre solution is not magic, just common sense

Town Teams, BIDs and other town centre management initiatives are all good - and already doing good in many town centres. Mary Portas is encouraging an excellent and already well established trend. Her report is focussing attention on an issue that affects high streets, shops and shoppers everywhere.

The decline in a large number of town centres has, first, though, to be arrested, by working against the things that have damaged them, the three Ps.

• Now: Parking - The punitive parking rates that cash-strapped councels are being forced to implement simply drive drivers to out-of-town shops instead.
• Next week: Property - Upward only rent reviews should be a thing of the past, if business declines, so should rental values. Business rates can be lowered locally, and where they can be and where conditions dictate, they should be.
• Next year and forever: Planning - in the long term planners decide where shops and shoppers go. The National Planning Policy Framework must make the Town Centre First principle more than just an empty phrase.

bira Deputy Chief Executive Michael Weedon said: "Towns grew organically, as part of the local economic and social ecology. They have been damaged and are still being damaged. Stop the damage first and Mary's Town Teams might stand a chance in helping high streets thrive, rather than fighting a rearguard action against the pain that is inflicted upon them through Parking, Property and Planning." 

The Portas Report is here

Visit the official Mary Portas website here

The BIS background document is here

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Comments

• Parking availability and Prices

  Posted by: Jon Dodsworth (Jon Dodsworth)

  The biggest problem facing retailers in towns and cities is parking charges and anti car councils who actually drive customers to outer town malls.

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• I wouldn't try to get there from here

  Posted by: steve mackie (steve mackie)

  Michael Weedon is spot on. It is too late to tinker with town centres. None of what Portas suggests is 'bad' or 'wrong' nor sadly is it particularly new. it is just too late. Town Centres are going to go through a fairly nasty period of decline before rental prices level down sufficiently to allow a mix of town centre residential projects and independent retailers to revitalise them. Anything which slows down this process is not a solution..... just a deck chair being re-arranged.

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• Support

  Posted by: David Clarke (David Clarke)

  High Streets & Traders need support on many different fronts. We need customers to be able to park easily and without charge for 4 hours at a time. We also need customers to be able to pull up outside the door to load heavy or awkward items without fear of a parking ticket. We need councils to relax rules and their money making schemes on outside displays. This would make the street scene more interesting. We need business rates to be a fair proportion of sales/profits. We need something to be done about professional national charity shops not paying any rates. These shops are now in competition with other businesses but have a huge financial advantage. No one wants to stop the local charity having a store but the other 'charity' operators need to work on a level playing field. We don’t need multiple street traders opening up and cherry picking items to sell cheaply whilst they have no real overheads. We need the Police to take shoplifting seriously as a crime, to prosecute and protect businesses from this theft. We need it to be easier to get change of use so a greengrocer can become a Cafe. We need good local public transport links so customers can hop onto a bus and 'nip into town' knowing it will not be an hour wait for the next bus. We need restrictions on the continuing drive for more shopping centres if something new is being built that will impact on a local high street then as part of granting planning permission find a way to purchase the soon to be destroyed High Street at no cost to the taxpayer and convert this area into much needed housing preventing it become another empty High Street thereby allowing the local trader the opportunity to relocate when the ‘Heart’ of a Town moves. We need pressure on Landowners to ensure they make every effort to let a property at a realistic rent, many landowners will not take a lower rent for fear of down valuing their estate so they keep units empty or charity shops.

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• high street retailing

  Posted by: mike (mike)

  1) parking close to town centres, should either be free, or the same price as in edge of town supermarkets. 2) towns require a mix of drapers, green grocers, butchers,ironmongers,independent coffe shops. 3) it is the cloning of towns by large fashion only chains that has killed the large towns. 4) bring back local democracy to the high street, currently, if the shop owner does not live in the high street, he has no council vote or local representative. 5) long live the independent shops, whose profits our ploughed back into the local comunity.

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• mary portas

  Posted by: roger banthorpe (roger banthorpe)

  brilliant idea .market stalls selling knockoff goods outside our front door. what a daft idea. Rents,rates,parking,yes they are all a problem as are internet sales without the cost of premises ,cherry picking after visiting our stores, having help and guidance in a nice warm shop from experienced retailers,then leaving to get it cheaper from someone who just takes the order.You just have to be savvy about not giving out detail. You won't beat a self employed retailer,we will survive on our strengths

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• Shift the high street's focus to the future

  Posted by: Andy Hunt (Andy Hunt)

  We are being told that the credit crunch will worsen. We can continually expect oil prices to increase. Online retail will become more competetive. There will be greater unemployment. So why then, when people have less money than they currently have, why should they come to the High Street? Of course they won't. Unless of course we radically change the focus of the high street. The high street must become more of social centre where people can meet, discuss, learn and (most importantly) influence their reality. Then the people will come. The proposed 'Town Teams' should have (at least) a dedicated 'community cafe' for this.

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