‘High Street revival too big a job for local authorities’

The fortunes of struggling High Streets can not be turned around by local authorities on their own as the job is too big – but building wide-ranging partnerships can revive local retail in 2024, a new report has stated, urging councils and government to encourage a new approach to turning around struggling high streets.

A recent report, published by the Institute of Place Management (IPM) at Manchester Metropolitan University, which runs the Government’s High Streets Task Force, has identified some of the key challenges uncovered from visits to over 140 towns over the past four years.

The report also found that 60 per cent of towns visited by High Streets Task Force experts did not have an activation plan and were not running sufficient activities, events and festivals to attract people in to use their town centre. Further analysis also found that only 35 per cent of place visions behind funding bids were deemed to be transformational and that over 30 per cent of local authorities requested delays to support services by the Task Force due to a lack of staff.

With recent news reports suggesting that a lack of resource was a major contributory factor behind levelling up funds being unspent, the IPM points out that an average local authority can have between three and seven retail centres within its boundary, which results in a struggle for resources to support them all.

Professor Cathy Parker, Co-Chair of the IPM at Manchester Metropolitan and Research Lead for the High Streets Task Force, said, “over the last four years, our team of experts has seen lots of good practice but there are many worrying examples of silo thinking holding towns back.

“Over 40 per cent of towns we visited had no real partnerships or place governance to deliver the transformative change that their high streets need. This means they weren’t working with the business community, community organisations or other partners such as police and housing organisations to develop plans or a compelling place vision.

“On top of which they had chronic staff shortages, which often resulted in only a few people from broad roles such as economic development being nominally responsible for place development across many town centres.

“As a result, projects don’t command the full confidence of communities, were delivered in a disjointed manner and are not getting the expected returns on investment. There is a huge amount of latent resource, passion for communities and local expertise that they are just not tapping into.”

Matt Colledge, Project Director for the High Streets Task Force, added, “For some time now, the end of the year seems to trigger virtually the same reports. Black Friday begins earlier, Christmas sales are weak and more casualties are predicted in the New Year.

“If we are going to escape this Groundhog day then we need a mindset change. It’s not sustainable to bank everything on one or two long-term capital projects, high streets need to see immediate changes and you only get these quick wins with robust partnerships.

“High streets have been over simplified for too long and we need to see the same mindset shift that we saw in health, which has put partnership working at the centre of dealing with myriad issues in a complex environment. Unless we change our approach to high street regeneration, we simply won’t deliver the change that our towns are crying out for.”