Tackling the decline of the UK's high streets

High streets are crucial to towns and cities across the world. Traditionally, they have been major contributors to local economies, and they help to shape the culture and identity of an area – places where local people can work, socialise and shop for daily essentials and luxuries.

However, many high streets in the UK are in decline. They have faced a series of challenges, including economic downturns, the rise of online retailers, the growth of out-of-town shopping centres  – and, this year, the unprecedented impact of COVID-19.

In 2000, high streets were responsible for 50% of all retail spending; but by 2018, this had fallen to 36.6% (Centre for Retail Research, 2019). Even without the current pandemic, the CRR (2019) forecasted this decline would continue, predicting the closure of over 31,005 stores in the next 3 years, resulting in an estimated 552,500 retail job losses. Household names have not been exempt from this downturn. And when high streets suffer, so do local communities as valuable amenities and meeting spaces are lost.

For over 30 years, academics from the Institute of Place Management (IPM) at Manchester Met have been studying and predicting high street change. Now, they are using this expertise to help local government, place leaders and other stakeholders respond effectively to the challenges currently facing the UK high street, using evidence-based research to guide their actions.

The IPM’s research directly influenced the Government’s creation of a £675 million Future High Streets Fund to support the renewal and reshaping of high streets and town centres. The IPM was also awarded an £8.6 million contract to lead the government’s High Streets Task Force, a consortium of place management stakeholders and high street experts which will provide specialist knowledge and support to those involved in helping regenerate towns and cities across the country.

Professor Cathy Parker, Co-Chair of the IPM, said: “Many of England’s high streets are at crisis point and are not the bustling hearts of their communities that they once were. Action needs to be taken locally and the task force will help councils, businesses and communities to make this happen.

“As the professional body that supports people committed to developing, managing and making places better, the IPM is perfectly placed to support the regeneration of high streets across the country.

“We are delighted to be working with our partners through the High Streets Task Force. With support and investment from the government and professionals across the country, we have a fantastic opportunity to develop places that are really valued by the local communities they serve.”

Simon Quinn, the IPM’s co-chair, said: “Our research has been instrumental in changing the understanding of how high streets function and how important local communities are to their regeneration.”

High Street UK 2020 and Bringing Big Data to Small Users

Two projects in particular show how the IPM have used their expertise to help regenerate town centres: High Street UK 2020 (HSUK2020), and Bringing Big Data to Small Users (BDSU).

Analysing developments in the UK, academics from the IPM felt that retailers and other place stakeholders struggled to use data in planning their response to the challenges they faced. HSUK2020 aimed to develop an evidence-based framework which would help them to tackle changes effectively.

The main aim of the project was to better understand how the vitality (i.e. how lively a centre feels) and viability (i.e. centre sustainability) of the high street can be enhanced and sustained over time. IPM researchers collaborated with ten UK towns to develop a set of unique criteria for analysing and identifying opportunities to improve high streets and other small commercial centres.

Initially, the project identified 201 factors that affect the viability and vitality of town centres, including business opening hours, levels of customer service, and the quality and location of car parking facilities. This list was then analysed to identify the Top 25 priorities for place management, chosen for their level of impact, and the degree to which local stakeholders can control each relevant factor. Building on this research, the High Street Taskforce was then able to identify a further 36 factors for viability and vitality. 

The full findings were published in a special issue of the Journal of Place Management and Development. Since the project was completed, the findings have been shared with thousands of place management stakeholders from around the world, to enhance public understanding and promote regeneration and renewal.

Having identified the crucial factors for managing high street change, the next step was to help stakeholders use these findings in their decision-making. The BDSU project aimed to improve the quality of data that high-street stakeholders had available to them, and make it easier for this data to be applied in practice. 

The project, funded by Innovate UK and carried out in collaboration with Springboard, Cardiff University and MyKnowledgeMap, focussed primarily on analysing historic footfall data from 150 towns and cities across the UK. This activity data shows how people use a centre, and what its main function is. It also helps stakeholders to respond to changes in consumer behaviour and other developments, and to measure and evaluate the impact of any actions they take.

The project developed a set of 39 research questions, building on the findings published by HSUK2020. Key questions included:

• What is the influence of location?
• Can we build a model of town centre performance?
• Can we identify the top 50 towns that optimise performance?

Using the historic footfall data, the project identified four ‘footfall signature types’ for high streets: comparison shopping towns, holiday towns, speciality towns and multifunctional towns. Based on this, the project developed a place management information system and a series of dashboard products, built by technology partners MyKnowledgeMap. These tools help stakeholders to use evidence-based forecasting when planning approaches to boost local economies, tourism, services and other high street activities.

BDSU worked closely with three towns in particular to see how effective data could be in rejuvenating high streets: Ballymena, Altrincham and Wrexham.

Ballymena reinvented its high street by strengthening its retail offer, in order to bring more shoppers into the town centre. In December 2016, footfall in the town had increased by 8.1% compared to 2015. The project used data on footfall to measure success, as Sean Trainor (BDSU project partner) explains: ‘One of the key things is that if we do something, in the council or the business sector, people will ask us how we benefitted from it. [KT4] And we could never really tell them before, we could just say “yeah a lot of people came in”. We can now analyse hour by hour, day by day, week by week. So any event that we have, we can immediately see that there’s a benefit there… it’s absolutely beneficial for all town centre stakeholders.’

Altrincham rebranded itself as the ‘Modern Market Town’ with an improved retail and service mix based around its successful food market and improved transport links. This has resulted in a decrease in shop vacancies by almost 75% since 2010, while footfall has risen by more than a quarter.

Meanwhile, Wrexham improved its governance structures to encourage more collaborative placemaking. This resulted in an average weekly footfall increase of 6%, to around 77,000 pedestrians, along one of Wrexham’s main shopping streets.

As a result of their expertise, the IPM became the lead partner in the Government’s The High Street Task Force, and will continue to build on these early successes, encouraging greater levels of collaboration and the adoption of data-based decision making.

“All of these processes need buy-in from a wide group of people, and a combination of leaders and do-ers,” added Professor Parker.

“They are processes, not projects. They do not have start and finish dates. They are ongoing commitments.

“Town centre decision-making needs to become less myopic and more porous. A true understanding of the issues and coming up with good solutions has to involve a much wider group of stakeholders.”

Dr Steve Millington, Director of the IPM and a Metropolis Chancellor Fellowship holder at Manchester Met, reinforced the importance of collaboration, describing place leadership as a fluid concept, ebbing and flowing around individuals, organisations and partnerships.

“If we want to unlock the potential of places then we have to accept that people make places: the council, the business owners, the residents, the employees, the visitors, the landlords, the young, the old, the in-between, the rich, the poor, everybody.

“We simply have to get much better at collaborative working.”

Leading place recovery during the COVID-19 crisis

The current pandemic has had a devastating effect on the retail sector, with the CRR predicting lost sales of £17,281bn, 20,622 store closures and a rise in job losses to 235,704 people against 143,128 in 2019 (CRR, 2020). As a result, the IPM team has responded to Government direction and pivoted the focus on supporting place leaders and local authorities through this crisis.

Working collaboratively with key partners such as MHCLG, Springboard, and the Office for National Statistics, they have used their expertise, and their extensive research to understand the scale of the crisis and its impact on town centres and high streets; support government with evidence/data for policy and response; and create and deliver a comprehensive programme of support for place leaders and local authorities to enable economic and social recovery.

The team designed a unique COVID-19 Recovery Framework based on their insights into key drivers of vitality and viability and the importance of footfall as evidence, which offers a model to support places through the crisis, pre-recovery, recovery, and transformation stages of the pandemic. It enables high streets, town centres, and district centres to develop a coordinated and systematic approach to the management of places to drive their recovery and improvement. The Government directly advised local authorities to draw upon this IPM framework in their recovery strategies within their ‘Reopening High Streets Safely Fund’ advisory document, which they provided £50m of support for in May 2020. The Framework is now being adapted in a wide range of places, for use at local, national and international levels.