The Herald - The Herald Magazine
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HIGH STREET?
EMPTY SHOPS, LIFELESS PEDESTRIAN ZONES, TO-LET SIGNS … WE VISIT ONE SCOTTISH TOWN TO LEARN MORE ABOUT A MALAISE AFFECTING THE ENTIRE COUNTRY
YOU don’t have to look too hard to find empty units in your average high street. Some towns are worse than others, of course. To take a few recent examples from across the UK: the High Street in Stockton, on Teeside, has 50 empty shops despite a £38 million revamp. “Ghost town” warnings followed the news that in some town centres in North Wales more than one in five shops lie unused. Empty units in towns and cities across Scotland – Ayr, Hamilton and Dundee among them – have also attracted concern and left many streets looking like mouths with missing teeth.
You can see something of that gap-toothed effect on Falkirk’s High Street. It’s not a particularly lengthy street – it takes just five minutes to walk from one end to the other – but has a dozen vacant units. On some of them you can make out the faded names of the previous occupants: Burger King. Topman/Topshop. Dalziel Bakers-Tearoom.
This is a street, though, of some history and charm. At its cobbled heart lies the 202-year-old, sandstone steeple, draped in scaffolding as part of a £5.6m Townscape Heritage Initiative.
Walk through a pend opposite it and you’ll find yourself near the Wheatsheaf pub, which dates from 1797. Down from the steeple is a plaque commemorating a visit by Robert Burns, 10 years earlier. There’s a smattering of 1930s shopfronts too.
The latest departure to be announced from this High Street is Poundstretcher, where the window bears the words: “Closing Down. Everything Must Go. This Store Only.” (The company didn’t respond to an email asking why they were closing.) Another pound shop occupies a handsome building which was home until last year to WH Smith. The street is studded with familiar names: Waterstones, Ann Summers, McDonald’s: Cash Converters, Bright House, charity shops, e-cigarette shops, travel shops, phone shops.
The scene is repeated across Scotland. The most recent Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC) Springboard Footfall and Vacancies Monitor found that while the country’s vacancy rate has improved to 7.5 per cent in July from 8.4 per cent in April, that still means hundreds of shops are sitting empty.
“Scotland’s retail industry is undergoing seismic change,” says David Lonsdale, the director of the SRC. “Structural, economic and regulatory forces are at play, driven by changes in shopping habits, meek levels of real pay growth and burgeoning costs. All of this is testing the business model of every retailer, and despite remaining the country’s largest private-sector employer, official data shows there are 10,000 fewer jobs and 1,700 fewer shops in Scotland over the past few years. “While our towns and high streets have a great deal to offer, and there is lots of good work being done to stimulate greater collaboration between the private and public sectors and to improve the public realm, the fact is that the ability of retailers to invest is being held back as tax and regulatory costs have mushroomed.”
The business rates escalator is “ratcheted up” each year, so much so that critics claim Scotland now has the highest commercial property taxes in the EU. Lonsdale says: “This was added to recently with the Scottish Government’s new £62.4m large firms rates supplement, making it even more expensive to operate in our town centres. It is little wonder that one in every 11 or so retail premises is empty.”
Some companies have blamed high business rates for pulling out. One notable example, a couple of weeks ago, was the
Stirling haberdashers McAree Brothers, which is quitting its premises in King Street after 138 years. A spokesman said its business rates were in excess of £27,000 a year, including “an extra tax imposed by the Scottish Government which hits large premises in town centres. This tax, together with the costs of maintaining a historic building, makes the premises no longer viable.”
Add to this the effect that the erratic weather has been having on some big retail names in clothing (Bonmarche has issued a profit warning, H&M has issued weakerthan-expected figures, M&S saw its worst quarter in clothing sales for eight years), and you can appreciate that high streets do not have it easy.
FALKIRK is affected by the same forces that shape town centres across Scotland. Where it differs from some is that as well as a high street it has not one but two shopping centres. The £30m-plus Howgate, opened in 1990 and accessible from the High Street, is doing well: its tenants include M&S and Debenhams. The other one, down at the east end, is Callendar Square. It was opened in 1993. According to a report in the local newspaper, it attracted 1.73m visitors between November 2000 and January 2001. On this particular afternoon, there are very few souls here. There is a noticeable number of empty units, including, most recently, BHS, which was a big loss by any yardstick.
The leader of the council, Craig Martin, put the High Street’s challenges into context last April, telling the Falkirk Herald after news of the BHS closure broke: “Shops that have closed in Falkirk have, mostly, not been local. It’s the independent stores we have that are keeping the town centre going, which shows the strength of our traders. It is company directors who are making these decisions that have nothing to do with conditions in Falkirk.”
At a guess you’d say this seems correct. You might also expect that competition from other places, from out-of-town retail centres, from the internet has also played its part.
In Falkirk’s case, five minutes down the hill from the steeple you’ll arrive at a retail venture that is doing very well. Central Retail Park is perpetually busy, and no wonder. It is easy to get to and has a wealth of retailers and attractions that include Tesco, Boots, Cineworld, Nando’s and a sizeable Next Home. Fashion retailer TK Maxx quit Callendar Square a couple of years ago and settled here. Plus – and this is probably a key point in its favour – there is free parking for more than 2,500 cars.
Overall, then, Falkirk High Street has its problems, but there are others that are probably in a worse position. Falkirk, however, is doing what it can.
Councillor Dennis Goldie was the district’s Provost in the late 1980s when the pedestrianisation of the High Street was completed. Today, as the council’s economic development spokesman, he believes buses should be permitted access to allow disabled people to shop in the street.
“The strange thing about Falkirk is that it’s a busy shopping centre, when you take in the retail park,” he says, “but what has happened in the years since pedestrianisation is that a lot of disabled people want to go shopping in the High Street and it’s vital that we help them do that. It’s time to take a review of the situation.
“You can have HGVs loading into the shops, right in the High Street front, until 11am. What’s the difference between an HGV and a small 25 or 30-seater bus for disabled shoppers, going up there once
If the retailers in the High Street are open all the time, and nobody’s buying their produce, then they need to look at the produce
an hour and dropping them right at the front door?
“It would be every bit as easy to drive a bus up the High Street now as it was when the street was in its heyday and you had dozens of parked cars, and hundreds and hundreds of people going about. It could still be done. I’m going to ask First Bus and say, let’s run a bus down the High Street and see how difficult it is. We’ll need to talk to the roads people as well.”
He adds: “Like any High Street, any town centre in Scotland, it’s a case of the quicker the better in terms of finding remedies – anything and everything we can do to bring people back. We’re spending a hang of a lot of money there [the Heritage Initiative, which aims to improve the streetscape, boost business and encourage more visitors, residents and retailers] – and eventually it will pay dividends and really bring back the character of the town.
“The High Street will never be the way that it was, so we’ll need to do things like bring niche shops in. Most of the units are occupied only on the ground floor – there’s nothing on the first floor or above. We could be bringing people back in there to live in the High Street. That would make a difference.”
As for the retail park – was it a mistake to
allow it to open so near to the town centre? “Hindsight’s a great thing,” he admits. “But there are a lot of people who walk up from the retail park to the High Street and vice versa. Times have changed, though. Residents campaigned for a retail park and they got that. If you’re asking me would the High Street be busier with some of the retailers there than in the retail park, the answer to that would obviously be yes.”
Goldie concedes that online shopping has had a massive impact on town centres, and notes that when large numbers of staff at nearby Falkirk Royal Infirmary were moved to the Forth Valley Royal Hospital at Larbert, a couple of miles away, it removed a lot of shoppers from the High Street.
But he also has a wider point. “If the retailers in the High Street are open all the time, and nobody’s buying their produce, then they need to look at the produce. They need to look at what’s on offer in their stores, and at the pricing.
“However, the vast majority of High Street shop workers are working their butts off. But retail’s a changing scene. I was in London recently and saw that shops had closed, even down there. So, in our case, niche shops, more people and better facilities, and possibly a bus for disabled people, or people from outlying areas – all of that would help.” Efforts could also be made to bring to the High Street some of the many tourists who visit the Kelpies and the Falkirk Wheel, both of which are major attractions.
In the opinion of Lonsdale, further action is required to spur extra private-sector investment in Scotland’s town centres and high streets. Government at every level needs to make it easier and less costly for retailers to operate, he adds.
“They should begin by reforming and reducing business rates, which are set to rise once again from April. At the same time I know from speaking to many shopkeepers that they view the building standards system in Scotland as a real bugbear.
“Chief concerns include the length of time needed to secure consents and warrants to open new shops, particularly in listed buildings which are common in our town centres, but also for things like putting in seats, toilets and signage. This is holding back much-needed investment in our high streets and town centres.”