High ST and Mary Portas

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I really think her ideas are a load of new labour style spin with more than a sprinkling of baloney!The high st has slowly died off because of online shopping nothing else. No strategic town centre team can change that. Making them social? I think that is what the bulk of people are doing coffee shops are rammed they don't need any help from what I see. Most people I know have shopped online this year. I have done a combination of both and generally only use the high st for things for myself that I need to see. She really gets on my wick!

I used to quite like her but she's started to take herself very very seriously indeed. I think she really does think she's the Queen of Shops.

What happened to "her" shop in the big London shop (can't remeber the name)? Was it successful? Is it still open even?
From what I saw on the programme it was a mix of a nothing and dire (and few actual clothes)

I liked her early shows but I think she is shooting herself in the foot rather now.
baloney I agree

She is talking about exactly the sort of hair brained schemes new labour came up with with silly departments within departments that are now being dismantled at the expense of the people working in them! People have no money the country is in huge debt and many things are being bought online or people are actually making do and mending.I find her patronising and a bit sneaky

I haven't read the details but market days are all very well if you live in the south of England. Here in Scotland there are hardly any outdoor markets, for obvious reasons. I was at our local farmers' market the other day and there were about 5 stalls, with their tops off because of the high winds and all the goods covered up by tarpaulins to stop everything from getting soaked. It's a nice idea, but simply impractical, unless space can be found for decent indoor markets.

her range is in house of fraser. i would shop more on the high street but she needs to address other factors too, like parking costs. i paid £17.50 to park in cambrigde on friday.

WE have market days here. Very pretty and a bit tourist friendly but over priced yummy mummy fodder that your average jo can't afford on a regular basis. Parking is a problem

I think someone had to come up with some ideas and why not Mary Portas? She understands retail better than most, and there are some success stories that could be replicated. We have a great town centre with a big market on Wednesdays and Saturdays which I'm sure brings in lots of people that spend money in other shops - so a national market day isn't such a daft idea. If the parking was free - another one of her recommendations - I'd definitely go there more and so would other people. I also like the idea of running a town centre like one big business rather than lots of individual businesses. Shopping malls have got that one down to a fine art.

Online shopping has definitely changed retail but even its biggest fans would say it's not suitable for everything and it's not very sociable either.

Local governments have killed the town centres. First they hike up the rent / business rates on town centre commercial property, then they nobble the motorist for wanting to park their car somewhere whilst they shop. Joe Punter votes with his feet and goes to the out-of-town shopping mall / supermarket where they can see a bigger choice of products (because the ground rent is far cheaper, more products can be stocked), sold at a cheaper price (because logistics are more efficient) and with no parking charges.

Until something is done to overturn this current reality our town centres will decline even more.

I agreed with every word she said - she had 28 items she wanted changed - free parking, low rents so shops are full (no empties), creches in town centres etc etc

There are 3 shops opposite me in a new development (been open about 5 years), there's a huge Debenhams, a TKMax, Laura Ashley etc but there are still empty shops because the rent is stupidly high.

There is no joined up thinking. Free parking would make the most difference imo.

Did you hear the bloke on the radio though I think R5 he said free parking was never coming back.It is extortionate here so lots of people use buses. Why don't more people do that? I think all her ideas are harking back to another time when town centres were alive and busy but there was no internet then and high rents etc make having a shop unattractive to business people. I do think the social aspect is thriving though coffee shops etc are full

We have a lovely high street here in the windy north. This morning I bought my food shopping without going into one of the supermarket chains and spent less. There are also a couple of boutiques, afew bars and cafes, a comedy club and loads of hairdressers!! I love it. Parking is a problem though. I wish I had this kind of high street in London.

The high street here has been taken over by pound shops and cash til payday rip off places. The large market has a hell of a lot of empty stalls. Rents inside the shopping centre are high so will only attract the large chains. Derby is a clone town.

"Why don't more people do that? "

On the bus question, I'd use ours if I knew where they went! It all needs pulling together - transport, parking, events, marketing, rents, rates, the range of shops. I think that's why she also recommended some kind of 'Town Centre Management' role to coordinate the whole thing. They can no longer rely on the 'it's there, they will come' philosophy which leaves us with wall to wall bookies and pound shops.

I think parking charges need to be looked at within the context of what Government makes councils do:

Monitor and improve air quality (i.e. discourage car use in town centres)
Provide sustainable transport plans (i.e. discourage car use in town centres)
Provide healthier lifetsyle policies (i.e. discourage car use in town centres).
Encourage shared space for pedestrians and cyclists (i.e. ... you get my drfit.)

I agree fully with Mr Pants. Councils are too greedy and charge too high a business rate. i live in a small town in Essex and the high street is full of charity shops and estate agents. (i have nothing against charity shops but every time we lose a shop it then becomes a charity shop.)
As for our high street you are not even allowed to drive down it let alone park. So therefore disabled and/or elderly people are not able to shop there.
Its so stupid it beggars belief.

Business rates are collected by central government.

All research shows that pedestrianising a shopping street increase trade after 12 months.

'Shopmobility' schemes are well used and liked by disabled and older shoppers.

belledechocchipcookie I agree on Derby - the indoor markets are dying (mostly due to bad council policies as well as footfall issues) let alone the issues with maintaining the outdoor markets around here. It's become quite the clone town as the independent stalls & stores are moving online or elsewhere.

It's very sad to see NorJustKangaskhan.

There are many problems facing retail but Mary Portas has conspiciously left out two of the biggest - the rise in VAT to 20 per cent and the fact that George Osborne and Mervyn King have scared the pants off people so there is no confidence and therefore no growth.

I guess that's because that wouldn't have gone down well with the Government who are commissioning her.

It's also all very well talking about parking restrictions because nobody likes them and they do adversely affect local businesses. But local authorities finance services out of the revenue. She hasn't suggested where the money to empty the bins would come from if they scrapped parking meters.

She does mention the rise in business rates and I'm unsure whether she has addressed the problem of reluctance of banks to lend so on that score I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

I can't decide whether her report is more dishonest than ignorant. But it's certainly got her in the news again, which I suppose is the main thing for Mary Portas. She's had since May to come up with something that most experienced retailers would be able to reel off the top of their heads.

This is the most profitable quarter for retail but friends have said that sales are so low they will be collecting the least amount in VAT ever for HMRC. So how does that help the economy? The point of taxation is that you have to make it worthwhile or people will avoid it. The rise to 20 per cent is a spectacular fail for the Treasury and the industry.

She's also glossed over the fact that shopping malls have stolen trade from independents. If I ran an agency representing Westfield I probably wouldn't want to discuss that either.

I agree with Portas on one view which she's expressed before though not in this report. The High Street is probably dead except for niche shops within affluent residential areas or high streets lined with Pound Shops, charity shops or bookies.

It's got little or nothing to do with online sales - there will always be goods that people want to look at and try on. If she doesn't know that she's either lying or she's a fool.

It is insulting that she tells struggling independent retailers to work harder or specialise or offer some form of value for money. Does she not know those that are still alive are already doing this?

No, probably not because she's only ever worked at a comfortable berth within a luxury goods retailer, as a consultant to shopping malls or on the telly telling people what to do.

If she ever had to work day-to-day running a High Street business she'd be sunk.

Also, I don't know where you get the New Labour thing from except that this Government has inherited the last one's obsession with taking advice from anyone as long as they're on the telly.

They could have stamped on that but they haven't. So in that respect, they're all the same.

limitedperiodonly This isn't a party political issue and I don't think the 20% VAT hike is the problem either. When VAT was dropped to 15% I didn't see an increase in trade for the town centres. The truth is that High Streets the length and breadth of the country have been dying on their arse long before this administration came to power and even before Labour got in way back in '97. (Blimey, a post where I haven't put the boot into Labour - must be Christmas or something!)

The economics of the situation mean that whatever range of goods and services are sold on the High Street must be better than those you can find in out of town shopping centres to make up for the hassle of paying to park and lower prices generally found out of town. Charity shops, mobile phone stores, estate agents, the odd bank and every coffee shop chain under the sun (which is what my high street looks like) doesn't entice me away from the peripheral edge of town which is where most of the money gets spent.

It might well be that our towns do a complete 180 degree shift and the unused shops are converted into housing stock - would that be so bad?

"George Osborne and Mervyn King have scared the pants off people"

In reality, a lot of smaller shops are the ones beating the recession. When money's tight, we're more likely to buy small baskets of goods rather than do 'big shops' at supermarkets. And there is a value-added element to personal service rather than self-service which smaller outlets can exploit.

mrpants the only party political point I made was when I blamed both Labour and the Coalition for being in thrall to grandstanding celebrities.

However, this report does have a political dimension pertaining to this particular Government because Mary Portas leaves out major factors affecting retail, presumably because they might embarrass the Government commissioning it. Or do think there's another reason?

The 20 per cent VAT rate is making people think twice about spending in all retail businesses - High Street, out-of-town or online. Of course, there are other factors - namely lack of confidence.

That means less money for the Treasury because people can choose not to spend on VAT-rated goods if they don't want or need to. I can't imagine how Osborne thought otherwise.

Are you a retailer? Is that how you know the drop in VAT didn't result in any increased sales in any retail business? I do know retail. It helped. Not massively, but it didn't hurt. It's hurting now and at the cost of a loss of tax revenue.

More housing stock would of course be welcome. But the report doesn't say how councils or private landlords might pay to convert those premises and how councils would pay for any extra services required by the people living in them. Neither does it say what you might do if there are no local shops and you have no transport to get to out-of-town shopping centres.

Those last two issues are the only things you've mentioned that I didn't address in my original post. Did you miss it?