There has been a lot of hand-wringing about the state of the UK’s high streets lately. The media laments their decline and governments and local councils vow to do something about it – even as more and more familiar brands close their doors. But here is the truth. Nothing can be done about it, and it is our own fault, collectively speaking.
Let’s face the facts. There is a popular saying: “Use it or lose it”. Most people chose to abandon the high street and the local shopping mall in favour of Amazon, eBay, Spotify and Netflix. That’s why you no longer have the hobby shops, book shops, the record stores, the cinemas, and white goods retailers of twenty years ago. They simply have no role any longer in a world of next day delivery and online streaming.
Businesses like Deliveroo and Uber Eats are even driving the restaurants out of business with their centralised kitchens on industrial estates as they facilitate our decision to order in a pizza and binge-watch some crap on Netflix instead of the traditional activity of going out for dinner and a movie. Where people interested in new culinary inspiration might have consulted their local high street butcher, baker, or green grocer, they now take out a subscription to a HelloFresh-style recipe pack delivery service.
You’re not visiting the chemist to get your photos developed either, or your bank, or the post office, as these tasks long ago migrated to your smart phone.
Meeting a client (and increasingly even a friend) at a coffee shop or for lunch has been replaced with a Zoom call. And you only need to dress from the waist up, so you’re not shopping for clothes and shoes as much as you used to.
And yes. It is impacting our mental health. Our hermit lifestyles afforded by the digital age is not good for us. From political polarisation to actual loneliness (while being active on several social media platforms), the picture of our collective sanity is not looking good. Like a Morrissey character, ‘we need to see people and we need to see light’… but we don’t want to drive in our cars to actually do it. The convenience of scrolling and tapping on phone screens is too easy and seductive.
Cars. Oh yes. They need a brief mention. Virtue-signalling councils have made it impossible or extremely expensive to park anywhere near the high street. And that’s another reason people no longer bother going there. A recent survey found two-thirds of people are put off going to the high street due to mad parking charges. It seems local councils talk the talk but want you to walk.
The first sign of decline is when traditional retail shops closed to be replaced with charity shops. But now even charity shops are giving up.
These are being replaced by so-called “American Candy” stores and bogus barber shops, which – if it wasn’t already obvious – have now been revealed as fronts for organised criminal money laundering.
And speaking of crime, this brings me to the final nail in the coffin: unopposed street crime. The police don’t seem to have the will to deal with it. Recently the police in London indulged their creative side drawing replica ‘blue plaque” signs (those signs that usually mark a site of historical importance) marking spots where “a member of the public had their phone stolen“. Perhaps the effort would have been better spent on catching phone snatchers. Shoplifting is at a record high.
A few years ago, I visited Canterbury in the South East of England and their high street was a model of regeneration. The city council had done a remarkable job. There were interesting new shops, street performers, tour groups, and so on. But it did not last. On a more recent visit, I was looking for somewhere to have lunch. Everything seemed full, but one restaurant was oddly and noticeably empty. As I approached in hope of securing a table, I realised why. Two members of “the homeless community” had taken up occupancy of their doorway. The smell hit one first. They were drinking and cussing. The staff were impotent and the police unwilling to move them on. The business must have lost thousands that day because we lack the will to deal with issues like this. Many of these “rough sleepers” are not even British, and I doubt anyone knows where they have come from. In the news this week – a coda to this story – are details of a knife murder in the middle of Canterbury’s pedestrianised high street, right outside the Lloyds Bank, committed by someone who resides in “a tent encampment” in a clearing behind the Asda.
I will leave you to speculate how Mohammed Hgar, 32, the accused in this murder found himself in an English high street, but it isn’t a stretch to conclude that’s another reason you might choose to order a Deliveroo and watch Netflix instead of going out on the town tonight.
Long and the short of it, we’re not getting our High Streets back because they serve no purpose any of us value any longer. We don’t use them, so we’ll lose them. A more productive discussion would be about what to do with the real estate. Pretending we can rejuvenate them is delusional. That is, unless we decide to change tack on our digital-based lifestyles, reign in rapacious town councils, and find the will to deal with crime… oh who are we kidding! It’s over.
