Some thoughts about dying town centres

[OtterTails]

I have been reading an older thread from 2022 about how many towns across the UK are becoming hollow shells of their former selves. How anti social issues have increased in many of these dying towns, with empty shops and even entire disused precincts.
My own old home town suffered a similar fate - where once there was a mix of social backgrounds and culture, old and young, this has steadily been replaced by troubled souls (addicts/ street drinkers, etc). You never see elderly people there now, and the regular shoppers disappeared after the closure of M&S about 5 years ago. One reason that likely makes this worse is that the local council placed a lot of the troubled singles in the areas around the town centre, which I think has put the last nail in the coffin.

But even though most of us are aware of big stores such as Amazon and online shopping having played a huge pat in this decline, I think there's more to it. Probably a mix of many reasons. We shop differently now, and the wold is changing, etc etc...

And then I thought (not heard this mentioned before), since so many people in the thread said that difficult road systems and parking fees have put them off going into town, maybe our increasing car use has played a big role, too.
There are far many more people on the roads now than ever before, and many older town centres don't have the space or infrastructure to manage this. So in this sense I think that the way we use our cars has altered how we choose to shop, which is quite different to say 20 years ago at the latter end of the high street boom, when many people still used public transport to go to town, even if they owned a vehicle. Or there were simply less people driving, so the roads/carparks weren't as chock full.

Just a thought, it might not just be about business rates or online shopping.

In my old town now, most of the people on the dying high street are at the lowest income bracket, which was absolutely not the case even 10 years ago. I am wondering if this is because they are less likely to own a vehicle - and the only shops that remain cater to this market.
So our larger economy is shaping the decline also.

Most of the pretty, thriving towns I know aren't particularly affluent, but they do have a mix of culture and age ranges, and people coming through often. My old home town doesn't, so the casino's and cheap shops are the only one's left.

@taxguru exactly, just makes me wonder about how much of an effect it's had on the uk that we don't basically have any of those local stores and high street stores and we aren't employing anyone locally in either anymore, perhaps they've found work in other places that contributes to the uk wealth but if not what happened... and where are we heading globally in the retail market, I do think China leads on this now, pretty much everyone now shops online and most products are made in China, so the only ones profiting are the owners of the online stores that may employ perhaps less staff as don't need a store and the Chinese manufacturers and retailers, all round we just employ less people in this area of the economy it employed a lot of people! Tech has improved the way many businesses also function meaning better productivity and the need for either less staff or a shorter potentially working wk...jjsy makes you wonder where we're heading too

What I'm more surprised is that so few High Street retailers seem interested in collaboration with other retailers. Many are stuck with premises that are too large or too expensive for their current sales volumes, but instead of entering into franchise models (or similar), they either plod on and end up going bust (Woolworths) or just have a managed decline/closure plan such as M&S.

I was pretty gobsmacked when Thorntons just shut all their high street shops. I couldn't understand why they didn't try to transition over to a more franchise (store within a store) model that they did have in some places, or independent franchisees. It was like they just threw in the towel without really trying. At the time, I thought they'd be a brilliant fit to partner with WH Smith in having a small franchised outlet with WHSmith stores, in the same way that they have Post Office counters. Thorntons franchises don't take up much space (we used to have one in a corner of a Hallmark greeting card shop) - just a counter and a couple of shelving units so could probably fit into a corner of most WHS stores. Would work for both parties - Thorntons would maintain a high street presence and it would drive customers into WHS stores. But, no, nothing like that at all.

After all, there are "franchise" or brand models in some department stores where sections of the store are zoned off for particular brands. We just seem to give up in the UK. Perhaps because most High Street retail is "owned" by hedge funds, investment trusts, etc rather than real people, so a particular chain store just becomes a commodity for London Financiers to buy/sell and speculate on, so they're not really interested in actually managing and growing the firms - more a matter of making quick bucks on churning them or asset stripping etc.

I do actually think there are encouraging signs. Modern convenience stores seem to have a better idea as to how to survive, i.e. to include lottery, alcohol, parcel sending/collection, utility bill payments, etc., which makes them more likely to survive than "stand alone" greengrocers etc especially in housing estate areas rather than town centres.

There are also lots of new "home" industries starting, i.e. creatives such as pottery, art, greeting cards, bath bombs, cakes, etc., which sometimes grow into needing a small shop or small industrial estate unit. In our village, we had a bakery/pie/sandwich shop that closed down 2 or 3 years ago and was languishing empty for a year or two, but has recently re-opened, still doing pies and sandwiches, but more aimed at party cakes etc - the new owner used to do party cakes at home, but got too big for her home kitchen, so is doing it in the village bakery instead and doing the pies/sandwiches alongside to have two income streams to help cover the costs.

We just need ways of supporting the new small businesses, both at a societal level (i.e. tax breaks, grants, incentives etc) and at a personal level by people actually supporting them wherever possible.

At the end of the day, it was "people power" who are driving the demise of the high street by not actually shopping there and buying from out of town retail parks or online instead, so "the people" need to step up and start supporting the remaining physical shops and any new start ups.

@taxguru - thinking of our large and unlet Debenhams in Bath in a prime position- turn it into an old school Kensington market type outlet - 50 concessions a mix of corporate and homespun of all types such as Thorntons, Rituals, a record shop, -charge really competitive fixed inclusive monthly prices and I can guarantee it will be making a lot more than NIL for the landlords. There is a total lack of forward thinking in the UK- often by huge landowners.

@taxguru sorry for the late reply, but re Thornton's, I think the latter part of what you said could be exactly that, also how often does the staff turnover, if they people running have made their mint over the last however many decades do they care that much or have the knowledge even or motivation to change..?.. it's interesting subject for sure and could be applied to the likes of a lot of the old brand names we've had for years like woolies, boots etc. I think sometimes what happens naturally is people stay too long and become out of touch or too lazy or complacent when fresh eagerness is needed to shake things up.