DEBATE: Should the government be intervening to help struggling high streets?
Should the government be intervening to help struggling high streets?
Rupert Pick, co-founder of Hot Pickle, says YES.
There’s more to the high street than just shopping. It’s about belonging, human interaction, community. And in a muddled, pre-Brexit, polarised, insular environment, we need vibrant public places more than ever for people to congregate.
Yet, in the first half of 2018 1,123 shops disappeared from our high streets – with further casualties reported since on an almost daily basis. The free market economist would argue that the market creates its own fate – an inevitable death knell for bricks and mortar brought about by the convenience and preference for online.
But while I’m not suggesting that local government raid council coffers to prop up second-rate retailers that have had their day, the significant cost of market failure to whole communities surely justifies the support of fledgling and innovative businesses that bring an energy and optimism to our neighbourhoods.
Start with better and cheaper parking, startup grants, and business rate relief. Without these interventions, I fear it that won’t be just high street businesses that will fail, but also the communities around them.
Morgan Schondelmeier, head of development at the Adam Smith Institute, says NO.
Government intervention has ruined our high streets quite enough already. The exalted thoroughfare where we used to live above the shops we owned has become a shell of what it once was, as planners forced us out into the suburbs.
It needn’t be this way. The solution to revitalising the high street is not even more intervention, either through re-evaluating business rates for high street landlords or higher taxes on online competitors.
Instead, it’s about breathing new life back into our streets. We need a more hands-off approach and fewer planning restrictions on high street real estate. Let people to use the space for what they want: living and socialising.
Government intervention won’t bring consumers back to the high street if there are more appealing options online. But if you offer them a high street living experience – somewhere to go, meet their friends, and the ability to walk to work – they’ll buy it.