Only urgent action can save the High Street

WITH immaculate timing, an authoritative report chaired by a leading retail expert endorses all the key recommendations of the Mail’s Save Our High Streets campaign, launched this week.

Says Bill Grimsey, former boss of Wickes and Iceland: ‘ Our cities, towns and communities are facing their greatest challenge in history, which is how to remain relevant and economically and socially viable in the 21st Century.’

Echoing all the Mail’s chief concerns, he insists that only radical reform of business rates, lower parking charges and a fairer tax system to level the playing field between traditional shops and online retail giants can staunch the flow of life-blood from our high streets.

Underlining the scale of the crisis, meanwhile, a separate study by the Centre for Retail Research finds that 60,932 shops closed down between 2012 and the end of last year, as online firms such as Amazon increased their market share. That’s a jawdropping 15.7 per cent of the total.

Indeed, with the CRR saying another 31,000 shops are likely to go in the next five years – threatening 382,500 jobs – it could hardly be clearer that urgent action is needed to save us from sleepwalking into a radical change in our way of life that will leave communities bereft.

As for what form that action should take, Mr Grimsey is surely right to argue that business rates, based on notional rental values, have been a disaster for high street shops, which are stung far more for their prime central locations that online retailers operating from out-of-town warehouses.

He is right, too, to highlight how rocketing charges for parking – set to net councils at least £900million in 2018, up £100million on last year, according to the RAC Foundation – keep shoppers away from town centres.

Yes, this paper recognises that millions welcome the convenience of online shopping – and that fair competition keeps prices down. But the fact is that competition will not be fair as long as councils impose disproportionate burdens on traditional shops.

Of course, not everyone will agree with Mr Grimsey’s suggested remedies, which include replacing business rates with a sales tax, capping parking charges and fining landlords who leave shops empty for more than six months.

But the debate on such proposals cannot begin too soon. Indeed, one thing can be said with absolute certainty: if we allow our high streets to wither and die, we’ll miss them more than we can say.