Canterbury businesses react to high street being named among the UK's 'healthiest'

Kent boasts plenty of vibrant high streets, but only one of them has recently been named among the nation’s 'healthiest'. Last month, Britsuperstore unveiled its ranking of UK city high streets based on the prevalence of empty units in each area.

Canterbury secured a place among the nation’s top five ‘healthiest’, ranking fourth overall out of the 54 locations studied. Impressively, the research found the city centre holds just 3.3 empty shops per 100,000 people, based on data from Rightmove and Zoopla compared to the latest population statistics.

Like so many others, Canterbury’s high street and businesses were hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic and multiple lockdowns. In the time since, great strides have been made in reviving the city centre, with Canterbury having welcomed a range of new openings over the past few years from numerous cafés and restaurants, to national retail chains and independent shops.

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Beyond the businesses, the high street itself recently saw a huge makeover as Canterbury City Council injected £1 million to revamp St George’s Street in a huge six-month project. Improvements included the replacement of the "raised, unstable" paving, the installation of new benches and planters, as well as upgrades to the street lighting.

Having now been dubbed one of the nation’s ‘healthiest’ high streets, KentLive headed out into Canterbury to see just what the city’s businesses made of the news. Not all felt the title was accurate, however.

“Little businesses don’t survive”

Ryan Lucas is the manager of Hardys Original Sweet Shop and has worked there for 12 years. He said: “There are still lots of empty units. At one point, just before lockdown everything was full up, all the shops were filled, all the side roads were filled.

“Now, there’s so many more empty places that then become the same vape shops, or cafés, or bubble teas. Amongst them, they must make up about 50 per cent of the town compared to little independent businesses.

“And you don’t see as many big-name shops; we used to have Thorntons, Wilkinsons, Debenhams; it’s all gone now. I think there should be a cap on certain shop types because you don’t need the same thing over and over again, and they shouldn’t be allowed within a certain range of each other - for example you shouldn’t have one café two doors down from another café, so on and so forth.

“Other than that, you can’t really help it because the rate of rent in Canterbury, especially anywhere around the cathedral area, is extortionate. So then you have to go down one of the side roads where no-one ever goes and that’s why little businesses don’t survive.”

“It’s just not what it used to be”

Similar sentiments were shared by Kezia Knights, who works at gifts and crafts store Sowley-UK and has herself grown up in Canterbury. “I’ve had so many customers saying: ‘Canterbury’s gone down hill’, so I don’t really know how it’s been named so healthy when everyone else is saying the opposite,” she said.

“The high street should have more shops like us, independents, rather than chains, and less cafés and food places because it seems like now you can come here and get your lunch but you can’t do much else. It’s not affordable enough for smaller businesses to pay rent, and business rates and bills, which is why most small independent shops aren’t lasting.

“I come and go from here, I’ll go away for eight months to a year then every time I come back I’m like ‘oh, that’s gone, that shop’s gone, there’s another phone repair shop, there’s another vape shop’, it’s like copy and paste along the high street really. It’s a bit disappointing.

“It’s just not what it used to be, compared to say eight or so years ago, in terms of the quantity of people that are out shopping, browsing and have money to spend. I’ve lived here for 21 years now, I’ve grown up here and seen so many changes and I wouldn’t really say that it’s gotten a lot better over those 20 years.”

"At night-time, it’s like Benidorm - it’s so busy"

Keith Martin is the owner of Maria’s Café, a feature of the city since 1976, and feels very optimistic about Canterbury's city centre. “I think it is one of the healthiest,” Keith began. “If you know Kent, you’ll know Sittingbourne, you’ll know Margate, you’ll know Ramsgate, you’ll know Ashford, you’ll know Dover - those high streets have died.

“I think Canterbury is the best of what we’ve got. There’s not many towns where you’ve got this many people walking up and down. I think we’re probably the iconic place to be, here in Kent.

“I also believe that the high street has changed since lockdown and it’s very much more of a tourist and hospitality destination than a shopping place. Shopping-wise, it is a good shopping experience but I feel people are coming here then going away and buying it online. I think high streets in total are dying and need to reinvent themselves because of that.

“Here at night-time, it’s like Benidorm because it’s so busy; the restaurants, the pubs and the clubs. We’ve got wine bars and cocktail bars, so this is probably one of the busiest parts of Canterbury now, down by the Westgate Towers.”

Keith went on to discuss what drives him to continue working in the city. He explained: “Instinctively, I like it because of the people here, that’s what I love. It’s a bit like EastEnders down here, we all know each other, all say hi, all help each other, all talk to each other so it’s not actually as big as it is.

"It’s actually very small in that regard. The demographic of people we get too, it’s not just the residents, we get all the international visitors and we get so many people coming back to us time and time again as well. The people, that’s the thing that attracts me here.”

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