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A.O.B.
Portas alone can’t save our High Streets
Published: 15 December 2011
‘Shop ‘til you drop’ has become so embedded into our culture that even The Portas Review of Britain’s high streets — no fewer than 5,400 are actually called High Street – subscribes to the vision that shopping is one of the country’s great leisure activities.
Mary Portas addresses the imbalance between local run-down high streets and the sprawling, successful out-of-town shopping centres in 28 recommendations ranging from a new ‘National Market Day’ to the segregation of betting shops into their own separate business-use class.
Portas has strong words to say about planning procedures and absentee landlords but has she given enough offence to those who have created the sorry state that many of our high streets find themselves in? Asda, Morrison’s, Sainsbury’s and Tesco now sell three-quarters of the UK’s groceries plus 14% and rising of non-grocery lines. The big stores have taken everything out of the high street, and put back in nothing.
At the heart of the imbalance is that old issue, money – or rather the lack of it. Faced with the Goliath retailers who inhabit the out-of-town shopping centres, high street shops are as David without a sling.
The playing field between the two retail locations is so unlevel that some redistribution has to be made between the benefits enjoyed by the out-of-town centres and the disadvantages our high street traders endure.
One significant way to restore equilibrium would be parking charges at shopping Centres, a topic which the Portas review skirted around. Parking fees are a tax – not a universal tax, but a selective one, which hits the weakest in the retail trade as it skews business away from them.
If parking fees were introduced at out-of-town shopping centres, it would not only be fairer but also put money into cash-strapped councils. Some of the proceeds could then be dedicated to introducing more flexible and cheaper in-town parking for the benefit of local retailers, which in turn would create jobs and the universal benefit of lower fuel emissions if shoppers leave their cars at home.
Portas has more to say on business rates, and recommends that local authorities should use their new discretionary powers to give business rate concessions to new local businesses.
Why not go further still and have a genuine two-tier business rate system, as opposed to ad-hoc concessions? Why not enhance the uniqueness of our high streets by positive discrimination of favour of individual retailers rather than chains?
Charity shops already have concessions, and while I prefer to see a colourful charity shop use up an end-of-lease rather than premises stand empty, charity shops are a disincentive for small retailers and their numbers should be limited. In my high street alone, there are eight charity shops. For many people, they’re more useful as a rubbish dump than as a place for charitable giving via the shop till.
Now is not a good time to be a retailer, but for some shopkeepers it is considerably worse than for others – and it is plain wrong that that small shopkeeper on the high street should be more heavily burdened than the retailers out of town.
The Portas Review
The Portas Review is available online as a PDF document:
“http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/business-sectors/docs/p/11-1434-portas-review-future-of-high-streets.pdf”: http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/business-sectors/docs/p/11-1434-portas-review-future-of-high-streets.pdf
Margaret Stone is an Associate of The Governance Partnership and while editing Enterprise Money Mail ran its 'Save Our High Street' campaign.