Doomed to living in a ghost town
TWO-TONE band The specials released the song Ghost Town in 1981 about the decline of Coventry’s manufacturing industry, but it could so easily have been written today about the decline of our High streets. Town centres have been decimated by internet shopping, high business rates and exorbitant rents. The scaling back of the branch network of building societies and banks has left small market towns desolate. The excuse is that more people use internet banking and there has been a reduction in customer visits. This has resulted in an ‘improved customer experience’ — fewer staff and shorter opening hours. Given that the economy has moved over the decades from manufacturing to the service sector, leaving us reliant on imports, who knows how many of our businesses will survive. Visiting my hometown of Ipswich, I counted 20 vacant shops in just three streets. I was pleased to see the former Post Office on the Cornhill is being converted into an upmarket restaurant. At least this beautiful building, the steps of which have long been a meeting place for friends, will not deteriorate any further. An art deco building once occupied by clothes chain Burton is now a shoe shop. But these two examples are the exception. The once vibrant, busy town centre has lost its lustre. Instead, the former Wet Dock has been redeveloped as The Waterfront, with a marina, restaurants, pubs and the
University of suffolk. The problem is that this area is isolated from the town centre by a busy gyratory traffic system. The task facing the borough council and the Ipswich Business Improvement District to regenerate the town centre has moved post-Covid from being very difficult to a Herculean task. New, radical ideas for regeneration are needed to avoid a catastrophic decline. The Government plan to empower councils to force landlords to let out properties vacant for more than six months is only part of the answer. I will leave the final word to The specials: ‘Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?’
GRAHAM DAY, Stowmarket, Suffolk. HOW dull it would be with no shops! Browsing online can’t replace trying on clothes. You can’t tell if shoes are comfortable or feel the material of a jacket. The end of local High streets would be bad news for older people who rely on them. There would be no more enjoyable days out at the shops with family or friends. Instead, we’ll just sit alone at a computer ordering online. Local authorities need to act quickly to lower sky-high business rates for shops and raise the taxes on huge online warehouses. We won’t realise what we’ve lost until it’s gone and then it will be too late.
A. WILLS, Ruislip, Middx. sHOPPING in a local branch of Lakeland, I was given two money-off vouchers. But they were only redeemable online, by phone or post, not in a store. Why discourage us from buying in a shop?