The battle to save our high streets
50,000 retail jobs lost this year as business rates rise... yet online giants get tax breaks. Today we launch the town centre fightback
“THERE’S no point just keeping your fingers crossed,” says local council chief Neil Schneider, who is battling to give Stockton-on-Tees a high street he hopes will inspire the nation.
A fifth of the town’s shops are empty and it has just learned its Marks & Spencer and New Look branches are closing.
But Stockton is full of ideas and was named Rising Star at the Great British High Street of the Year Awards in 2016.
And at the heart of its thinking is a very simple idea – making people want to come into town. Mr Schneider says it must become a “community hub where retail plays a part”, adding: “We have to repurpose our town centres.”
The council has a team dedicated to putting on events and the high street has been spruced up with fountains and lighting. But the authority is also trying to help aspiring shopkeepers.
It owns a mini-arcade, the Fountain Shopping Mall, where new starters pay from just £50 a week to rent a space – without having to shell out on business rates. Julia Powell of graphic design firm Just Believe is one of them. She said: “It’s not just selling to people, we also run workshops.”
Former maths teacher Richard Drake started out in the arcade and now runs an award-winning bookshop around the corner. And Carl Shepherdson, 29, has gone on to own pet supplies boutique Wags and Whiskers, a cafe and another store. The council also organises a qualification for people to become market traders, has pumped cash into its library and offers an hour’s free parking. But the most ambitious project is the £17million restoration of the Art Deco-era concert hall. The Globe had been abandoned for 20 years but in its heyday it hosted everyone from The Beatles and The Rolling Stones to Stevie Wonder and Morecambe and Wise. Now, it will be relaunched as a music and comedy venue with capacity of 3,000 – and new businesses are springing up nearby. The council is ploughing £10million into the scheme, despite Central Government funding being slashed by £73million. Yet these initiatives risk being pockets of brilliance amid the run-down buildings blighting the centre. Part of the reason, says Richard McGuckin, the borough council’s director of economic growth, is many are owned by landlords who either cannot afford to do them up or rarely, if ever, see them. “It’s frustrating,” he admits. “We have few powers. We can go for a compulsory purchase order that can take 18 months and hundreds of thousands of pounds for each one.”