sale on the high street. Butchers, grocers, tailors, outfitters, hardware stores and the like filled each town. It was impossible to get what you needed to survive without stepping on to the high street. The rise of the supermarket giants and then out- of-town shopping in the 1980s and 1990s saw high street trade begin to fall. The dawn of the internet in the subsequent decades has taken that decline and accelerated it at pace. Now when you need to go to do your shopping, you drive to a free car park alongside a huge out-of-town trading estate. If not, you shop on your laptop, tablet or phone and wait for the delivery. The high street is unable to compete with the convenience of either method and, until now, it has not adapted or changed. Woolworths is no more, Debenhams is struggling as is House of Fraser. Mothercare has disappeared in the last month. Countless other retailers who are familiar names up and down the country are struggling against high rents and rates and are either closing down stores or begging for rent and rate reductions. A report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Local
Data Company that analysed the high street in the first half of 2019 threw light on the struggles. It said that for every day in the first six months of the year across the UK, a staggering 16 shops were closing and up to 6,000 closures were expected across 2019. That figure was double that of 2018 and more than ten times the 222 recorded closures in the first half of 2017. The same report estimates that 57,000 retail jobs were lost in the same period. The figures are stark and there is no suggestion that it’s going to get any better soon. So what can be done to improve matters? What is the silver bullet that will save the high street and ensure that town centres are thriving, busy places to enjoy for years to come? The harsh truth is that there is not one magic fix. But there are certainly a series of changes that can be made to ensure that the high street doesn’t die and has a future. But the overriding consensus from a wide number of experts from planners to architects and from marketing companies to local authorities is for a specific change. Town centres need to be a place to live, work and play. It’s no longer just about shopping l
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