BLOG: Why are councils so keen on reducing high street footfall?

Much is being made at the moment about what to do with Britain’s ‘deserted’ high streets, a topic high on many estate agency owners’ agendas as their firms face higher and higher rents and business rates despite diminishing footfall.

This is particularly painful when crazy local councils give permission for out-of-town retail parks while at the same time charging huge fees for town centre parking both on and off street.

Having recently visited a clutch of towns in England this summer the evidence is there to see – high streets taken over by charity stores and pound shops.

High streets in Britain face many challenges. The Covid pandemic accelerated the move from physical shops to the ‘Amazon economy’ (online now accounts for 36% of all retail spend) while councils’ anti-car policies – including high parking charges and aggressive parking attendant teams – have seen consumers put off shopping on their local high street.

Diminished footfall

A report by the Welsh government found that three quarters of those working in businesses within town centres blamed restrictive parking policies for diminishing footfall, for example.

Traditional estate agencies have also faced a separate and unique challenge – competition from the hybrid models much loved by many big corporates (including even Winkworth at the moment), and online-only estate agencies like Purplebricks.

If you talk to estate agency owners, it’s not unusual to hear them complain justifiably that, while they face rising rents and business rates, their online/hybrid competitors don’t have offices and therefore dodge many of the key costs of ‘flying the flag’ in a town centre, but while at the same time claiming to ‘cover the area’.

The craziest trend of all is that many councils continue to give out-of-town retail parks the green light which, along with parking charges, remain the key reasons why many shoppers eschew high streets.

Signs of hope

There are some signs of hope. Prime towns and city centres are enjoying a revival as they become ‘destinations’ in their own right, and ‘Gen Z’ – those between 14 and 29 years old – are reporting online shopping fatigue, with some recounting their desire to ‘try clothes on’ before they buy.

There are also signs that some councils are waking up to the disaster that has been of their own making – namely trying to stop people driving into town centres – and that there’s no point having nice pedestrianised high streets if no one’s visiting them. And so have planners, whose professional organisations are now very keen on trying to save town centres, having previously been instrumental in weakening their appeal to shoppers via ‘car free’ policies in the past.

High street regeneration is also now a key area of national policy activity.”

High street regeneration is also now a key area of national policy activity and the past two Governments have spent £2.35billion on 101 town centre regeneration projects.

But what Britain’s governments need to do in my opinion is copy councils like Bedford, which recently brought in a range of free parking measures both on-street and off-street in a bid to attract more people into its town centre – and perhaps persuade councils like Wiltshire to step away from its high parking charges, which are to rise 20% for pay-and-display parking in a few days’ time.

Estate agents should also lobby their local councils to change their ways – because local authorities who seem intent on killing their own town centres are not good for business.