It’s time to let the free market reshape our failing high streets
How to fix the UK’s crumbling high streets?
That’s the question on everyone’s lips each time a household name falls into financial distress. From House of Fraser to Poundworld, barely a week goes past without news of another retailer feeling the heat.
Today former shopkeeper Bill Grimsey publishes his second review of the high street, attempting to diagnose and mend the problem.
Grimsey, who previously held chief executive roles at Wickes and Iceland, originally conducted an independent “alternative” review five years ago as he did not believe the government’s so-called Portas Pilots were delivering results. Now he is back for more.
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His earlier diagnosis was bang on the money. The Portas Pilots were subsequently dismissed by their own titular inspiration, retail guru Mary Portas, who labelled them a “weighted PR exercise”. The pilots, which cost the taxpayer £1.2m each, oversaw thousands of shops going bust or leaving the high street.
Grimsey’s latest report lays out some equally hard truths. “There is already too much retail space,” it says. “Bricks and mortar retailing can no longer be the anchor for thriving high streets and town centres.”
Town centres need to move with the times and “be repopulated and re-fashioned as community hubs that include housing, health and leisure, entertainment, education, arts, business/office space and some shops,” he adds.
And he is quite right too.
Technological and social changes have removed the need for large retail-dominated high streets in our big cities and modestly-sized towns alike. This is no bad thing. Instead of harking after some idealised vision of the past, we must embrace the opportunity to use this space for other purposes that are increasingly needed and enjoyed by people of all ages.
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But where Grimsey and Portas both fall short is in their government-heavy proposals that instinctively call for a command-and-control approach.
Grimsey wants to create a “Town Centre Commission” along with several other quangos, a “National Urban Data Knowledge Portal” to “establish common key performance indicators to measure the economic and public health of each town”; he wants new “penalties and incentives for landlords”, a new landlord register; he wants new local authority “events teams” and “design teams”, and the creation of “Community Improvement Districts”.
In fairness, his report also contains liberalising measures – for example, making it easier to turn failed commercial space into new homes. It is along these lines we must focus.
Portas has previously said high street policy will come together “as the government decides what kind of country we want to live in”. But the government cannot make this decision for us.
By all means, it can subsidise popular local services in the centre of towns – sporting facilities, parks, community centres. Yet even these must be strictly demand-led and have the flexibility to evolve (or be scrapped) as people’s habits change.
Instead of pursuing more grand schemes or multi-layered micro-management, the government would be better off liberalising the planning system in town centres and allowing decisions to be determined according to the constantly-evolving needs of local customers, rather than the often-outdated ideas of bureaucrats.