In Focus Collections


Securing the future of the UK high street


The centres of towns and cities can have a prosperous future if they look to a diversified nature and proper funding


Tom Brown Managing director of real estate, Ingenious


UK high streets have reached a ‘tipping point’. That was the view of a recently published parliamentary inquiry report on UK high streets. The shift to online sales (now accounting for 20% of all retail sales), the upward revaluation of business rates, previous planning policies, and local- authority financing constraints are impacting retailers and high streets up and down the country and across all sectors. As concerns have intensified about the


state of our high streets, the government is slowly starting to take action. And urban regeneration is set to be a significant area of policy focus over the next few years, as the high street is rightly seen as a vital component of the UK’s economic and social fabric. In consequence, property investors should be seeing this as an emerging opportunity. Ultimately high streets need people if


they are to survive and return to being at the heart of the communities they serve. It may be stating the obvious, but the need to attract people back into our town centres will have long-term implications for town planners for years to come. Evidence suggests that the towns that have


found it harder to adjust to the challenge from online sales are those that have tended to be overly exposed to retail. This narrow focus has meant that, as bricks-and-mortar shopping has declined, there has been little else to replace footfall into town centres. Urban planners are shifting their efforts


towards creating activity-based communities, moving away from the retail-centric model and bringing together a range of amenities including shops, leisure, hospitals, residential, offices and spaces for art and culture.


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Town centre population density Government initiatives are facilitating the move towards town centres being places of social transactions, rather than just a conduit for financial ones. There has been a key strategic message sent from central to local government: raise the density of populations in UK town centres. This was an explicit objective in the revised


National Planning Policy Framework in July 2018, targeting mainly those areas that are already well served by existing transport links. In particular, the framework stated its


support for maximising the use of previously developed or ‘brownfield’ land, which includes opportunities to use the airspace above existing residential and commercial buildings for new homes. Measures announced in the October 2018


budget further reinforced this policy objective by proposing to extend the use of permitted development rights (PDR) and allowing for more compulsory purchase orders. PDRs give greater flexibility around change-of-use regulations, allowing for empty retail and office space to be converted into residential, as well as permitting development in the airspace above existing buildings. However, a major barrier to town centre


regeneration is fragmented ownership, which is seen to inhibit a more holistic approach to town-centre planning. To help tackle this problem, one initiative being proposed is to trial a register of empty shops in selected towns (bids are currently being reviewed by the Future High Streets Fund), allowing prospective developers and tenants to gain easier access to existing properties.


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Urban regeneration is set to be a significant area of policy focus over the next few years, as the high street is rightly seen as a vital component of the UK’s economic and social fabric


The Future High Streets Fund and


Future High Streets Task Force have been established to help local authorities with financing and expertise, including helping to attract private investment, albeit within a limited scope given that only selected local authorities will benefit. More generally, the government has also announced £900m worth of business rate tax relief for smaller retailers, which should help to relieve financial pressures in the short term.


Regeneration initiatives Greater Manchester has an ambitious long- term development plan, aiming to deliver nearly 25% of the total target of new homes in Greater Manchester and a significant proportion of office space within the city centre between now and 2037. Regeneration in the city centre is now


expected to have a beneficial impact on the surrounding town centres in Greater Manchester’s boroughs – Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Wigan and Salford – allowing for a potentially diverse mix of investment propositions.


June 2019


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