this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024

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‘Ghost town UK’: 5,000 businesses disappeared from the high street last year (inews.co.uk)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (2 children)

My pie in the sky dream would be for councils to buy high street shops, land and all, and rent them back with rent caps to small business owners. No more sky high business rates to worry about. Encourage small and medium size businesses to set up and grow their business up to a certain amount of turnover a year. Maybe that might reverse the trend in businesses abandoning the high street because there's no customers and customers abandoning the high street because the prices are sky high?

But who am I fooling? I live in Bristol and what we need is the council to fund building of a mega arena not even inside Bristol 🤷.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Councils are going bankrupt because they can't even run their own business. Letting them be landlords also is a recipe for disaster.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I did say it was a pie in the sky dream 😂

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Not just the high street but also high density housing around as its the most valuable land in the city.

But I think it should all be done at market rate. Set a target of say 95% occupation and set the rate at that. If it's 0 or if it's 1,000,000 then so be it. The money can get returned to the town. Maybe have some alterations to this. Like 5 year contracts and if you renew you get a discount.

Land value tax is the closest we have to this and thankfully Wales is bringing it in. Its a very good system.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

I'd be interested to see this broken down on whether the high street has been pedestrianised or not. There's high streets that are a busy road with shops, which I would avoid, and those that have been pedestrianised and are actually places where you can spend some time.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

We need onerous vacancy taxes. Currently by my understanding, vacant property actually gets tax breaks.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's been getting ridiculous around here.

Investors bought a lot of the commercial property a few years ago.
Rents went up a little, but the businesses could generally work out a deal they could afford.

Once the interest on lending went up, however, those investors are being squeezed.
What was £1000/m interest on a £1500/m rental is suddenly £3000/m. So they squeeze the businesses...Who understandably tell them it ain't going to happen.

One of these places closed recently near me. The shop went from full trading to everything closed in under a fortnight.
The "to let" page on the local commercial lettings site said that they were "aiming to find a similar artisanal tenant", or words to that effect.

So now it's empty, and a for sale board is up. No doubt at some point, it'll become our 29th phone repair shop.
(If anyone has good information on how those shops pop up, I'd be really interested. I've always assumed they're in for almost nothing, on a really short contract, so the landlord doesn't have to pay rates)

I would dearly love for the council to buy up commercial property, and give good deals to shops that add to a town.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I assume those janky phone /electronics repair places are money laundering.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah that's my take on most of these as well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I don't think you're wrong in a sense, but everyone has a phone and phones break all the time. Some of those places will do the job cheaper and quicker, even same day. And first party repairs can be either extortionate (Apple) or laughable/impossible/non-existent (Google, Samsung etc.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Agreed, but there's some shops in my town (HCOL area) and there's never a soul in there. Just makes you wonder how they are paying the sky high rent.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Reminds me of this series "Turn Back Time" in which they took shops from the high street throughout the ages to show how they've disappeared, and that was filmed 10 years ago.

Link for the curious

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not from UK. Exactly what is a "high street"? Never heard this term before.

[–] Buckshot 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Its the area of a town that has all the retail shops. A lot of towns have a road literally called High Street but the term is generalised to mean the main retail area of a town. Typically smaller shops in the town centre rather than out of town shopping centres and retail parks with larger stores and dedicated car parking

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Thank you

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Wandering Turnip on YouTube does excellent videos about this

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Remember it's not the landlords, it's the lack of parking

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Or the lack of good public transport.

There are towns in my area I would visit more if there was a reliable bus or train line that hadn't been axed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It’s the fact we all buy online

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Eh no. There are many goods everyone prefers not to shop online, but in-person. The fall of the high street doesn't have one singular reason. Everything from the rise in driving removing foot traffic, to high rents, to 15 years of austerity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

There are many goods everyone prefers not to shop online, but in-person

I'm struggling to think of many example - hence my local high street beeing mainly cafes, nail-bars, barbers and cornershops selling every day essentials

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Clothing is a common one, people like to see, feel and try on clothes in person. Ordering online then having to handle loads of returns can be a faff for some.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Unless you work at my mom's workplace. Then it's basically buy all clothes online. I still don't understand how they do that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Stores are places with people and thus they are scary.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

most things. Let me put it this way, if you were literally in-front of a shop. would you prefer to go-inside and look at the and make a decision there? or would you go "no I'll open up amazon on my phone instead"

granted, there's a lot of stuff most people don't care about being in-person for. but a lot of thins you buy online, you would rather purchase in store - if you were just already there instead of on your sofa.

this is why there is no one-reason, and it's more complex than the two second thought answer.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

if you were literally in-front of a shop. would you prefer to go-inside and look at the and make a decision there? or would you go “no I’ll open up amazon on my phone instead”

To be honest if I'm in-store, I'll quite often open a browser so I can look at reviews, so yes I'll tend to end up open up Amazon, bith for reviews and a price check.

Yes, it's "more complex than the two second thought answer" - but I'll contend that this still the largest factor in the changing make-up of the high street.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Why would I want to deal with crowds of people and shop keepers when I can just go online and have it delivered next day to my hands?