Portas review
PORTAS CALLS FOR PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF COALITION’S LOCALISM TO SAVE HIGH STREETS
Chelgate welcomes the Mary Portas review into the future of high streets, which was published today by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. It recommends the practical application of the coalition Government’s new Localism Act, and suggests ways in which local retailers and communities can use new powers to revitalise their own high street.
Chelgate’s planning consultancy has been practising localist principles for decades: we consider our success in the planning field to be due to the fact that we take community consultation and involving local people very seriously and have advised clients to do the same. We have also based in Southwark for eleven years, and have watched and been a part of the regeneration and revitalisation of Bermondsey Street into a thriving high street and a real community. Bermondsey now has its own Neighbourhood Forum working on a neighbourhood plan, which featured at a Westminster Briefing chaired by Chelgate deputy chairman on 10 November.
Neighbourhood plans give an opportunity for local people to shape the future of their high street, to take ownership of it – to make it a place they want to visit and shop at. Portas wants high streets to all take advantage of the Localism Act – and is calling for a high-profile campaign to get more neighbourhood plans off the ground. She fears for the future of the high street if nothing is done.
Retailers and businesses should be at the heart of this neighbourhood planning process. Portas cites the example of Chatsworth Road in East London – an example that Chelgate knows well, after meeting with Euan Mills, the urban designer involved in that project. There, traders are working with residents to use neighbourhood planning, alongside other local initiatives like loyalty cards, to revitalise their high street and make it a unique offer within London’s wider economy.
Portas also recommends the use of the Community Right to Buy under the Localism Act, to turn unused buildings into centres for microbusinesses and entrepreneurs. She also suggests a new Community Right to Try– a new “Empty Shop Management Order” to encourage the use of ‘meanwhile’ leases for otherwise empty properties. This could fill the gaps.
The facts look grim for the British high street: one in six shops currently stands vacant, and consumers are flocking to out-of-town malls, which are attracting people by “becoming 21st century urban entertainment centres” instead of the “lightless, soulless experiences of the past”. But the high street is the original mixed-use entertainment and social venue. Jane Jacobs, the great American urban theorist, who Portas quotes approvingly, wrote that the good street has a variety of functions, so that different people, for different purposes, are using the street at different times of day. No other venue has the attractive power of a well-done high street.
Debate will continue as to the costs of these policies, the effect of ‘high street protectionism’ on struggling consumers, and whether the new regulations that Portas is suggesting is better than the red tape she proposes to do away with.
But one thing comes clearly out of her report: local traders, residents, and councillors have in the Localism Act tools as never before to revitalise their high street, if they are willing to take the initiative.
