Here’s how to get life back in the high street
Landlords and councils need to cooperate to attract shoppers with a rich variety of traders
Napoleon famously said that the English are a nation of shopkeepers. He was right – although as the fate of BHS shows, that doesn’t mean we are always very good at it.
The nature of retail is change, and unless you allow some form of evolution, you get stuck. The collapse of BHS is desperately sad for its employees, but the stores failed to keep up with the times and their absence from our high streets is not, ultimately, a tragedy. Bad businesses must be allowed to go to the wall. But there is no doubt that we could be doing more to help well-run shops and chains that are struggling.
It is easy to see how the high street can get it wrong. Fashions move fast. Twenty years ago, the retail fad was for coffee shops; then came mobile phone emporiums and more recently a glut of women’s fashion outlets. But filling high streets with just one kind of shop is a recipe for disaster. The result is high streets that fall apart commercially, and sadly, in many cases across the country, that has already happened. Combine a retail monoculture with the inexorable rise of internet shopping and you have a problem for which the only answer too often seems to be desolate charity shops and seedy betting stores – the former because of discounted business rates and the latter because landlords know they always pay the rent.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. It is clear that a broad range of physical shops have a future. Nobody wants to order everything online – they like to go and see what they’re buying. But nor do they want to be endlessly driving around town clogging up the roads and wasting their time. A single destination with a variety of shops remains just the ticket – a high street, in other words.
The challenge therefore becomes about “place-making” – how to attract the right balance of retailers to attract customers. Clearly, business rates are a problem for many. We need to get businesses working and making money before we tax them. We need an agenda for growth.
Likewise many are worried about the new burden of the living wage, fearing that it penalises smaller businesses. I think we should be able to achieve a decent high street without having to get labour at a knockdown price. But even this is not the biggest issue.
Ultimately, the health of our high streets comes down to landlords and local authorities. Where the landlord is the dominant owner in an area, they need to be strategic about the kinds of retailers they rent to. Here are some tips from my time overseeing the regeneration of parts of Marylebone in central London.
Food stores may not seem particularly attractive, because they don’t have huge margins, but they do attract lots of people – so place one to draw footfall, and then work in the fashion retailers around it who make more money.
There is safety in numbers, too. Grouping shops together – a butcher, baker and greengrocer in one part of the high street where the rent may be more affordable – will make each busier than it would be on its own. Landlords should also subsidise rents for certain businesses – like post offices – which can’t pay top rates, because they are crucial to making a place useful, and so drawing custom.
If you have a high street where each shop has a different landlord, each looking for the highest rent, local authorities may have to step in. Again, food is a good place to start. Councils could be easier on licensing premises to help create activity around restaurants and bars, which get people into town. They might even consider buying a couple of units at each end of a high street to act as commercial anchors for a diverse range of shops in between.
They must consider the practicalities too. Providing free or cheap parking can make a big difference, as can a simple bit of dressing things up by planting trees, and getting rid of pavement clutter.
The death of stores like BHS or Austin Reed does not mean the end of the British high street. But there is room for those which are occupied to do better. Authorities must be alive to possibility – and willing to embrace change – to help them.