Town Centre Solution Is Not Magic, Just Common Sense

Teams, BIDs and other town centre management initiatives are all good - and already doing good in many town centres. Mary Portas is encouraging an excellent and already well established trend. Her report is focussing attention on an issue that affects high streets, shops and shoppers everywhere.

The decline in a large number of town centres has, first, though, to be arrested, by working against the things that have damaged them, the three Ps.

• Now: Parking - The punitive parking rates that cash-strapped councels are being forced to implement simply drive drivers to out-of-town shops instead.

• Next week: Property - Upward only rent reviews should be a thing of the past, if business declines, so should rental values. Business rates can be lowered locally, and where they can be and where conditions dictate, they should be.

• Next year and forever: Planning - In the long term planners decide where shops and shoppers go. The National Planning Policy Framework must make the Town Centre First principle more than just an empty phrase.

bira Deputy Chief Executive Michael Weedon said: "Towns grew organically, as part of the local economic and social ecology. They have been damaged and are still being damaged. Stop the damage first and Mary's Town Teams might stand a chance in helping high streets thrive, rather than fighting a rearguard action against the pain that is inflicted upon them through Parking, Property and Planning." 

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