Reviving high streets

SIR – Your report (“Smaller high streets may signal route to shopping sector revival”, May 11) rightly identifies high streets as crucial to the retail revival. However, ensuring that they thrive will require government support.

Retail was a major employer before the pandemic struck, integral to the economic wellbeing of the country, so it should be at the heart of the rebuilding strategy.

The aim must be to create a new breed of entrepreneurial shopkeepers, while supporting those who have survived the lockdown. Central to this will be wholesale changes to commercial property law, reducing the burden on stores by abolishing upward-only rent reviews, introducing turnover rents and relaxing change-of-use restrictions.

At the same time, responsibility for turning our town centres into community hubs that people want to visit must be given to local authorities. Before the lockdown, the Government had introduced a handful of schemes to rebuild high streets; now it has the opportunity to go further, and to make a real and positive difference.

Rowland Gee

London W14