18 TOWN CENTRES Shapps promises ‘Portas-Plus’


The government has issued its formal response to the Portas High Street Review. Communities & Local Government Minister Grant Shapps said the government accepted the vast majority of Portas’ recommendations - but added that he intends to go further with a raft of new incentives to rejuvenate the country’s rundown high streets.


The ‘Portas-Plus’ response includes: • £10m investment in a new High Street Innovation Fund focussed on bringing empty shops back into use.


• A £1m Future High Street X-Fund, which will be awarded in a year’s time to the locations which deliver the most creative and effective schemes to revitalise their high streets;


• A National Markets Day, launching a National Markets Fortnight, to celebrate the role markets can play, help aspiring entrepreneurs try out their business ideas, and encourage more visitors to town centres; • A £500,000 fund for Business


Improvement Districts, to help town centres access loans for their set-up costs


• A further round of Portas Pilots, aiming to breathe life into underused high streets. Shapps said more than 100 towns had bid for the £83,000 prizes on offer in the first wave of 12 pilots launched last month.


Shapps said: “Mary Portas’s review made crystal clear the stark challenge our high streets face. With Internet shopping and out-of- town centres here to stay, they must offer something new if they are to entice visitors back.


“Her report has


provided the catalyst for change that many towns have been craving. I now want to see people coming together to form


their own town teams and turning their creative ideas into reality to ensure their high streets thrive long into the future.” Martin Blackwell, chief


executive at the Association of Town Centre Management, welcomed the response’s focus on Town Teams and its renewed support for BIDs. “We all recognise that the high street in 10 or even five years will be radically different to that we see today,” he said. “This Government’s approach, shown in the response to Mary’s report, is giving local communities the opportunity to shape the future High Street they want to see in their town.”


But the response from retailers was luke warm. The


British Retail


Consortium’s director of business, Tom Ironside, said: “We’re waiting for the government to share the full detail of its response since there is a difference between accepting recommendations and putting them into action. We were pleased with many of Mary Portas’ findings, which set out a bold vision for the future of the high street, but we’re concerned the government hasn’t yet matched her level of ambition with its response. “There are some positives.


We’re pleased there are no indications the government is intent on undermining consumer choice by penalising other shopping locations but nor is there much support for town centres. It’s good to see extra funding to help Business Improvement Districts and to support councils in dealing with empty properties but this doesn’t address the core challenges. Bolder moves which could’ve made a significant difference are missing, particularly in the light of the extra £350m retailers will have to find because of this year’s business rates rise.”


BNPPRE highlights the lowest risk retail pitches


London suburbs including Lewisham, Wood Green and Uxbridge are the least risky towns in the UK to invest in retail, according to BNP Paribas Real Estate’s latest research. The leading international real estate adviser has published a Retail


Risk report which, instead of looking at rents as an indicator, analyses the health of the UK’s towns ‘within a weakening retail economy’ to form an index of risk averse and more risky towns which aims to show investors where they should be investing their money in retail. The index was compiled through detailed assessment of retailer financial health, how many of the ‘unhealthy retailers’ are in the top 100 towns analysed, supported by analysis of the number of vacant units and charity shops in the towns. The least at risk suburbs and towns were identified as Lewisham,


Wood Green, Uxbridge, Harrow, Truro, Sutton, Colchester, Inverness, Peterborough and Southport.The most at risk towns and cities were identified as Bradford, Derby, Wolverhampton, Southampton, Hull, Sheffield, Swindon, Warrington, Stockport and Nottingham. Ian Parish, head of retail at BNPPRE, said: “Other than an obvious


SHOPPING CENTRE April 2012 www.shopping-centre.co.uk


north-south divide in line with affluence, the actual towns themselves are not necessarily the ones we thought we’d be identifying at the beginning of the process and the report goes to show that even the most dominant towns and cities are not immune to risk.”


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