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 highlights.
The report, published by the Institute of Place Management (IPM) at Manchester Metropolitan University, which runs the Government’s High Streets Task Force, identifies some of the key challenges uncovered from visits to over 140 towns over the past four years.
Highlighting how chronic staff shortages, the failure to develop partnerships and an inability to develop a compelling place vision is preventing towns from unlocking their potential, the IPM is urging councils and government to encourage a new approach to turning around struggling high streets.
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.”
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.
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.
