watching a town completely die

[BlessedByTheShitFairy]

This is so sad really, the town where I grew up. I know many business folded during covid and many high street staples have been closing for years, but this is different.

It's a large town, over 400K population, had a bustling, varied and thriving centre for most it's history, has now lost, and many before covid:

Debs, Next, M&S, Topshop, H&M, Body Shop, its central post office, game shops, cafes, most youth related places such as skating, bowling, carts, ALL restaurants (no exaggeration), health food stores, 2 shopping centres, most pubs, it's huge market, several banks, nightclubs, a town centre co-op, Spar, book shops, many charity shops and all of it's high end hair salons. Even the Starbucks slid off and the main post office was reduced from around 10 staff to 1 and shoved into a tiny toilet sized cubicle on the periphery of the borough.

These have been survived and replaced by - pop up eyebrow/lashes salons, fast food joints, poundshops, phone-unlocking shops, cash converter type shops, Primark (it's only remaining clothes store), Iceland, and the rest if boarded up. Interestingly a ton of privately owned car parks have taken over the area and hardly anyone uses them. It is unrecognisable from even 7 years ago. It now only attracts crime, heavy drinking, and a much less diverse population.

I know many towns have experienced closures of big brands, and things are simply changing (the net, everything online, etc) but this is really extreme, especially in comparison to a few years ago, it was not particularly suffering a decline. I do know that the council slowly sold off everything over the years, and have sent 2 huge shopping centres to their doom by selling to overseas investors who never came and filled them, so they are like enormous empty spaces that attract crime.

I don't currently live there but my remaining family that do say they never go in to town anymore, and feel forced to buy everything from standalone supermarkets in other areas.
I live in a fairly average town that has seen changes but there are also attempts at rejuvenation. Things are still ok and thriving in the centre. I am also aware that many towns are coping ok, taking the rough with the smooth, even though these issues have increased across the uk over all.

What could have happened to this one? Why so desolate and different? It is like the council just gave up sold it off and turned away. It never used to suffer so much crime, and the sound of police and ambulances is constant around the area now. The town centre was it's pride and joy, had so much put into it (festivals, events), so I can't understand how it got so bad.
Even the people who you see there now are all strangely similar (dress the same, same behaviours) and the diversity has vanished. Curiously rents are still super high and I have no idea who is taking them, if at all.

I feel sad about it because I grew up there, and have so many good memories of my teens when it was thriving, packed and full of interesting places to go and shop. The pubs were visited from far and wide, and it had a great college, access to learning, and much more culture. Now it is lucky to hold on to a handful of football clubs and that's the only interest left. Where and why did everything just die? It was previously so bloody alive.

@BobbinHood of course not but that's what they chose to bid on

I grew up near Wigan, sorry but the first time I went there was 25 years ago and already then it was known as a bit of a hole and my Dad who went to school there commented on what an awful dive it had become. I think some places are just not great.

its not true that business rates dont do anything, since so many bigger stores are moving to out of town industrial retail parks because they get more for their money, and plenty of smaller businesses do have footfall but they cant make enough to cover their overheads. The vicious circle is that the more these shops leave or shut, the less reason people have to visit.
Its not the only thing, but its a massive issue

I hardly go into my local town. Hardly any shops worth going in now and masses of bored teens on scooters using the pedestrian areas to scoot on. I can’t even take my disabled mother there now as they have done away with the main disabled parking area to pedestrianise it which tarmac and squiggly lines painted on it at the cost of £163k and just put a couple of disabled bays outside marks and Spencer’s which are no good if you have to get a wheelchair user plus wheelchair out of the car when you are on a main road.
The large department stores are gone. One has already been converted to flats on the upper floors and no one seems to want to buy the ground floor for retail and the other is due for conversion soon with more flats but upmarket ones for out of town ers with the ground floor being a gym and community space for the flats.

You chose to explain your reasons, and your explanations made no sense. If you don’t like having your thought process questioned, the best thing to do is to avoid broadcasting it on a public forum.

How on earth people have money for "pop up eyebrow/lashes salons, fast food joints, nail bars, fake tan places and shower jobs" strange how those are popping up everywhere. Those slug or fake drawn on eyebrows/semi tattoo etc often look awful and cheap, tattoo bars charge a fortune, fast food is more expensive and less quality and goodness than homemade.... yet energy increasing and rent/ etc etc but these unnecessary tatty places are thriving.

Gosh, I thought my town was bad (SE) but Wigan sounds like it's had it much worse.

Our town is also full of pound shops, etc but we did get H&M and Next a few years. We lost Debenhams like everyone else and I was hoping it would become something good, but the council has taken the space for itself.

We also got a cinema, not been yet though.

For me, online shopping is the norm now and in town shopping is supplemental (except Primark which you can't buy online).

I live in Preston and have done for fifty years. Me and DH had a conversation last week that when DC2 goes off to uni and retire soon after, I doubt we will be sticking around.

Many nail/phone repair/lash type shops are front for money laundering or criminal activities nor actual money making businesses.

Interesting and also really heartbreaking, I think I live in one of the areas (outskirts of London) where WFH has made the town centre busier. Some weekdays look like a saturday now.
The council has encouraged big supermarkets with free parking at the top and the bottom of the high street so that drivers can come in.

The Debenhams is empty though as well as a fair few other shops but they seem to be encouraging social use for some of the free space.
There are a lot of nail bars, cosmetic dentists and Bubble tea places though.

My hometown (up north) has been slowly dying a death for the last thirty years. It's even more painful to watch because in its Georgian heyday it was really prosperous and the architecture is a constant reminder of how far it's fallen from that - elegant townhouses and fancy Victorian shops with stone mouldings, most now boarded up and peeling. Top Shop, Woolies, Thorntons, Dorothy Perkins, Natwest, HSBC, independent department stores... all closed. As with most small towns, there's a group of people working really, really hard to keep things going, and the Britain in Bloom displays are usually beautiful, but it feels as if the heart's gone out of it. It has a museum, a library, sponsorship from local industry, yet there's such a sadness about the place when you walk down the main shopping streets and see nothing but For Sale signs and vape shops. Maybe that's just me projecting my own nostalgia, though.

Where I live now, further south, isn't particularly posh but there's obviously a slightly higher level of spare cash/support for farmers' markets, food festivals, small bakeries, coffee shops, pretty things that make the town feel more hopeful, even though we've lost Debenhams/Arcadia group and the M&S is always a bit wobbly.

I am from a Northern city that is a very popular tourist destination and that has also suffered many shop closures (including John Lewis) although that was out of the centre. There are a lot of empty shops including Debenhams and one street has sadly got a lot of homeless people sleeping in the doorways. If someone does take them over they become a coffee shop or bar it is sad

Our town started dying even before Covid. Its literally now coffee shops, estate agents and Turkish barbers and lots of empty shops. I've lived here over 50 years and it doesn't feel like home any more

Maybe the only places that aren’t following this are the areas that benefitted from wfh changes

York, right?

If so, the worst thing to happen to the city centre is the influx of screaming drunks every weekend, on stag/hen/birthday celebrations.

I was in the town OP was talking about approx 3 years ago. I had a couple of hours between trains and headed out into the town centre expecting to grab a coffee etc. It was grim. Dirty, hardly any shops, nowhere decent to grab something to eat and there were loads of lowlifes hanging around, a lot of whom had drunk too much /were high on something or had obvious and significant mental health problems. It felt edgy and unsafe even though it was the middle of the afternoon. So I don't think Covid caused the decline. I think poverty, a lack of education and aspiration, and a breakdown of law and order has a lot to do with it. Don't think parking charges have anything to do with it.

That's very depressing, OP.

My city us much smaller (120,000 pop) but is completely thriving. We've lost Debenhams and Top Shop obviously, but have everything else you could ask for (except maybe Zara!). We have loads of high end high St clothes shops, like Hobbs etc, loads of independent shops, cinemas, bookshops, and I'm guessing at least 60-80 places you can eat in the daytime or evening.

What helps is being a tourist destination, having a large Uni, not having much out of town shopping and also being the biggest place for a 40 mile radius.

Posters above are right that when you have a slew of more or less interconnected towns and cities, like in the NW and in the NE then some of them will inevitably decline, as other areas thrive. Still very sad, though.

And in response to PP a lot of the tanning salons, nail bars, etc are fronts for criminal activity / gangs / drug running

Lots of town centres grew too much and now shopping has contracted, need a complete rethink. Bedford for example has a great theatre and museum and some lovely buildings but far too many retail buildings that it no longer needs.

in the absence of a decent government (who all live in posh areas) we need miracle benefactors like in Folkestone where one man pretty much has paid for it’s regeneration. There are prob enough billionaires in the UK to do that for their home towns but will they?!! Fat chance

I'm right down south and it's the same here. The town I live 15 minutes walk from has virtually lost all the decent shops over the past couple of years, Next is one of the few clothes stores left and I heard they will be going as their lease will not be renewed.

The next town where I spent most of my younger and teenage years is just awful but the Conservative council has just been replaced with Lib Dem so fingers crossed, they might be able to do something to improve the run down, awful shopping area in the High Street.

Makes me really sad when I remember how vibrant and busy it used to be. 😢

How on earth people have money for "pop up eyebrow/lashes salons, fast food joints, nail bars, fake tan places and shower jobs" strange how those are popping up everywhere. Those slug or fake drawn on eyebrows/semi tattoo etc often look awful and cheap, tattoo bars charge a fortune, fast food is more expensive and less quality and goodness than homemade.... yet energy increasing and rent/ etc etc but these unnecessary tatty places are thriving.

Aren’t these the small things that people treat themselves to when they can’t afford anything? Like lipstick sales always go up in a recession?

@Shortbread49 The decaying northern town with an opera house sounds very like Buxton? I went about 4 years ago. It’s beautiful in places but felt very edgy and dodgy as well. Lots of poverty.

Like all Northern towns
I live in Harrogate a bleak place now. Pissed up hen dos. Cake shops and art galleries (which close after 6 months when the free lease ends)

I live 5 minutes walk from town and haven't been in for months as it is so depressing

Airbnb kills communities.

What are people actually going into towns for now?

I needed a couple of plain white vest tops. I visited the local (free parking) retail park - not a single acceptable white vest top available (lack of sizing on the good one vest I found, and the other styles were cropped/see through/sports tops etc).

I checked the various supermarkets I usually buy my groceries (and clothes in), nothing suitable.

I know that a store such as H&M is most likely to have what I need. However there are now zero H&M stores available to me apart from one right in the city centre.

So my options are order online and pay the delivery fee (essentially doubles the price of the item I want), or pay around £4.00 for return bus fare into the city to possibly get the one vest I need. Or drive into the city and pay the £4.00 to park.

I never just go into the city for a wander as I don't have the time, money or inclination to do so.

So acquiring a very basic item is actually ridiculously challenging.

I get why the stores are closing - because people aren't going in and using them. People aren't going in and using them because they are too busy, or have less money spare, or the options available are such poor quality they aren't worth buying.

Its very very frustrating.

Another issue with parking that a fair few charities are currently highlighting is that most have moved to non-cash payment, many via app or online too.

Age UK are just one of the charities pointing out that many of the people that still use - and want to use - their local highstreet are elderly and they do not like to use, and many are unable to use, app or online payments. So they stay away too.