Poll. Did you stick to the high street or switch to out of town?

[IncompleteSenten]

Not a taat but inspired by. Purely because I'm curious and polls make posters honest 😁

High streets are ghost towns now. When the alternatives that led to this happening first sprung up did you

YABU - I stuck to the high street 80%-100% of the time until the shops all closed and I had absolutely no alternative.

YANBU - I switched to the big supermarkets and the retail parks and home delivery etc 80% - 100% of the time

If you are too young to have had the choice please don't vote 😁

I am 45 and was a young teen when I went to the cinema on a retail park and supermarkets were already a thing then so not sure if I am your demographic. Whilst I pretty much stuck to town as a teen and at Uni and in my 20s at some point online shopping became much easier and the choice in town was such that it became a pain - probably over the last 10 years. I only go to retail parks generally for specific shops eg b&q or Clarks outlet

Yes, our local town used to shut up shop bang on 5:00pm. It’s got much better the last couple of years and they have late night shopping nights, they open later in the summer and stuff like that now.

We are a very tourist town and quite often in the summer you’d mooch down for ice cream or something after dinner. The town would be absolutely rammed with people, but all the shops and stuff would be closed. We have 2 ice cream/dessert shops but they’d close at 4pm so everyone would resort to multi packs from Sainsbury’s.

We have a massive sailing event every year, thousands of people around with money to spend. Other than pubs/restaurants. Everything else is closed.

They then all moan about how it’s been a terrible summer season and the town is dying. It always seemed mad to me. They’re really not helping themselves.

It has got better the last few years I have to say, and some new shops have opened who are opening later.

My local town centre high street is dead! It used to be thriving when I was a child in the eighties.

The council charge extortionate car parking fees (2 hours £8 for example) and there are not enough car park spaces . Taking the bus to the bus station isn't great either because they are infrequent and it is a 10-15 min walk to the shops.

The high street used to have a good selection of chain and independent shops , but most have gone now. M and S, Next, Waterstones and Wilko and no post office.

Now all you have is a Sainsbury’s, Boots, Primark, one bank , coffee shops, bookmakers and nail bars.

None of which are of any interest to me. I prefer to shop in person, but like many other people I am busy - I work during the week, opening times on the high street are traditional and inflexible (09:00-17:00) not helpful if you work. At weekends I CBA to go shopping in the high street or at retail parks, so for me I buy 99% of stuff I need online including food shopping.

I would use the high street again if the shops sold what I wanted, customer service in shops was good, they had decent places to have a bite to eat or drink ( not over priced coffee shop food) and I could park.

Do not see that happening any time soon, so I will be sticking to online.shopping.

i have that choice, but I know a number of late middle age /elderly people, who never used computers in their jobs and refuse to learn how to use a computer/ the internet or shop online, they have no real choice but to use the high street for their shopping.

@Somewhatchallenging ironically there's probably plenty of people like students who could (and would like to) volunteer at charity shops in the evening.

I went into a high street shop, last week, to buy a new toaster. I knew roughly what I wanted. Shop had twenty identical ones plus one the same brand I was interested in. I asked an assistant if that was it and was told there was a better selection online. So I went home, ordered it on Amazon and it was delivered, free of charge, within 24 hours.

Ps I am northwest based so possible that regional impacts as well

@muddyford but she probably meant on their own website. Why didn't you order from them rather than resorting to Amazon? "Online" doesn't just mean Amazon.

Not all charity shop staff are volunteers. The brilliant one I go to is mainly staffed by employees. During a working day, they get donations and maybe a delivery. A donation might be a carrier bag-ful or 5 bin bags, A delivery could be something like 200 bin bags full of donations.
After they close the shop, they need to re-fill the rails, do the books, clean the shop.
I was shopping there one sunday and they were closing the shop because they only had 2 staff and a big delivery had come in. I insisted that I'd stay and help but they refused, but I helped anyway.
It was hard work even with 3 of us.

The shop is usually very busy. The rails are full of primark, boohoo, shein etc but they often have real finds. Yesterday, I got 5 things, decent condition, brands much-liked on S&B for £16.50.

About 20 years ago, switched to out of town retail parks and supermarkets because the stupid council put in crazy one way systems, traffic calming, pedestrianisations, and insane car park charges to discourage people driving into town.

Well it worked.

The town centre soon became a ghost town and nearly all the chain stores have closed leaving just vape shops, betting shops, charity shops, coffee shops and loads of drugged up zombies wondering around. Meanwhile the out of town areas are absolutely heaving with people (who drive there because of free parking, no stupid traffic calming and pedestrianisations etc!).

Switched because it’s just more convenient and humans naturally like convenience.

I live in a town so tend to pop to the High Street shops and town centre supermarkets - but primarily because the High Street starts at the top of my road so I can walk instead of having to get in the car!

It sounds ridiculous, but what puts me off is paying for parking…I know it’s only a few ££ but the days of just putting your money in and getting a ticket are long gone! Download an app, recall your car reg, the machines are always at such an odd level that I have to stoop, (although thinking about it, they’re probably low for wheelchair users) the keypad is always laid out in a odd way, it all just puts me in a rage before I’ve got there, so if i can buy online or from out of town where you don’t have to pay to park I will!

Shopping is no longer a fun outing - 9/10 when you’re looking for something in particular it’s not in store but only online. I used to love a mooch round the shops!

@KirstenBlest so why don't the charity shops do the sorting, putting out stock in the morning and open the shop later? So rather than opening at - say 9.30am when there will be little trade - open at 12 and stay open until 7pm?

Councils do not set business rates - they are set by the government. In my area the district council gets to keep less than 6% of what they collect . They get the blame for rents too even though they don't own any of the premises. County council are responsible for pavements and have woefully let down the town.
Parking charges are down to them though but there are cheaper car parks within 5 minutes walk.

I don't know, but the shop is busy at 9 a,m,
i can't see them getting much footfall after 5.30 because the other shops would be shut.

I haven’t switched at all, and won’t (apart from furniture/DIY etc stuff that is pretty much always in retail parks). If I buy clothes in person it’s at a high street department store that has a lot of different concessions or a couple of independent shops, i buy shoes from a city centre shoe shop, I won’t buy books on Amazon, I support the local bookshops, and, while I get bulk stuff (cleaning products, pulses, tinned tomatoes, toilet paper) delivered, I shop for vegetables at the Saturday farmers market in the city centre and in the covered market which is open 8 to 6 Mon to Sat.

There is a giant retail park that a lot of shops have relocated to, but it’s a depressing, generic place. It’s about 20 years since I was there.

Yes!! It’s a pain in the arse.

We do have parking machines still, that accept card payments, but they never work.

I’ve got 3 parking apps on my phone for all the various car parks round here. You’ve got to remember the code off the machine make sure you pick the right car to park (we’ve got 2 between us), they don’t use apple pay or remember your card details so I have to plug that in every time, and 9 times out of 10 I’ve got no bloody phone service. Plus, they charge an 50p in processing fees on top of the already extortionate £6 for 2 hours parking charges.

If I go into the main/big town, we’ve got all that palaver, I can park for a max of 2 hours so it doesn’t really encourage me to stop off for a nice leisurely lunch and go for a wander round the shops, or anything like that. Not that there are any shops I want to go into anyway. I only go when I absolutely need to (hairdressers appointment).

I can walk down to my town centre, have a mooch, spend as long as I like, have lunch, maybe a cocktail, wander round a local artist’s little gallery or something and then walk home.

I don't know why people are so surprised when things change, the supermarkets were classed as the enemy to small independent stores, and now they are changing direction and heavily pushing the online side, where they take more money than through the tills.
I personally much prefer shopping online The shops in the high street are poorly stocked and all selll the same over priced rubbish, plus customer service is poor.
It's so much easier shopping online and so much choice, I rarely go to any shops in person if l can help it.

Brighton is still rammed. No empty shops

Depends. For lunch / coffee I go into town and will have a rummage around the independents and charity shops whilst there. For kids clothes shops, home wares and Boots, out of town. For adult clothes, to the next city.

I'm a blue badge holder and have to park too far away to be able to manage to shop on my local high street. I love M&S food but only go when DH is with me because there's no car park and I can't carry it.
There is an extortionate multi story car park but even the disabled spaces are difficult to park in, let alone get the doors wide enough open to get out and I'm tiny.
There's also the fact that even the largest shops on my high street don't stock my size. I've been into the town centre once this year. It was full of pigeon shit, chuggers and beggers actively harassing and intimidating passers by.

It's harder to find staff, paid or volunteers, to work unsocial hours to say 7pm. People want to enjoy their evenings.

I stuck with High St. until it became impossible to find anything to buy, or to go into a shop without either being harrassed and followed about by a sales person trying to make a sale, or impossible to actually get served because no-one was about, or they were all off chatting.

So, moved on to supermarkets and sometimes a department store, aside from there being no shops to go to where I was living.

Supermarkets became crappy with self checkouts and no staff so now use online with the occasional forage around a store. The High St. is one of the reasons we moved here but the banks have all gone and the useful shops have gone, like DIY, craft supplies, pet stuff, and it is now a street of nail bars and facial fiddling, cafes, cafes, cafes, and coffee, overpriced supermarkets and one dump of an Iceland that looks as if someone opened the stock room door and slung the stuff out of it, then shut the door and went home.

Lucky to have a Post Office to return online purchases so that's it. I miss the shops, but there aren't any.

I go high street (I am lucky enough to live somewhere where its still thriving) between those two choices.

However I get most of my stuff online. I think this has decimated the high street more than out of town, which has been an option foryears, i remember studying it at school 20 years ago

One of the things that puts me off a lot of high street though is quality and material- I don't want to wear acrylic and polyester which seems to be in most shops

Our local high street is thriving, as it's in a touristy part of London and a popular place to visit, a busy market, music venues, street food. I don't use it too often except to collect parcels from Amazon lockers and from the Argos for ebay deliveries. I get all groceries delivered and don't do top up shops. I do like the buzz of being out in a busy environment. I'd hate to live in a dead little town with nowhere to go.

Out of town shopping is too difficult to get to on public transport so it's not very popular here.