Yahoo News The old high street is dead – creating homes on it could revitalise our town centres
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Before I joined the great graduate migration to the capital, I grew up on a farm near the county town of Stafford, slightly north of Birmingham, round abouts where Orwell observed the change from affluent south to deprived north in The Road to Wigan Pier. Here much of the high street gathers dust.
The new Riverside shopping centre has tempted away even the most ardent high street loyalists. Curries and PC World combined and then both disappeared. Next, M&S, Burton, River Island, all relocated leaving bookies and charity shops in their wake, if not just painted over shop fronts.
Much of the central Guildhall shopping centre is completely bare, like the showground after the county show has finished. Passing my old barbers where a whole side of the street is left empty you begin to feel that the condition has become terminal.
Yet while much of its interior stands empty, Stafford extends its reach further and further into the surrounding greenbelt, and its outskirts move closer and closer to our farm. Nearby my uncle’s farm- where my Dad grew up- has already succumbed to compulsory purchase and each trip home I see new houses sprouting where once had been grass fields.
The high street is dead, long live its conversion (at least in part) to homes
One day in frustration my dad exclaimed: “Why can’t we just build homes on the high street?!”
<br> Initially, I thought it sounded too simple. Then the more I thought about it, the more I believed it to be a good idea. Then the more I looked into it, the more I realised it was a brilliant idea.
The idea has been around for a while. In 2011 the Policy Exchange called for an end to planning rules that say shops must always be shops and bans their conversion into flats or houses. More recently an updated Grimsey Review included it in its plan for the high street, and last year the Federation of Master Builders estimated that 300,000 to 400,000 new homes could be created by using empty shops and the space above them.
Converting retail space into residential is something the Prime Minister raised in a policy announcement on housing earlier this year whilst promising “protection” for the high street. I say though, the high street is dead, long live its conversion (at least in part) to homes.
Fundamentally there are too many shops, and that’s a key reason for so many being left vacant. The second Grimsey Review estimated that the current oversupply of retail space in the UK was around 10 per cent, something it expected to rise to 20 per cent based on current trends.
We do an increasing amount of our shopping online (expected to peak at 30 per cent of retail sales by 2025) and many of the traditional anchors – banks, post offices and department stores – have gone and aren’t coming back.
We don’t need so many shops, but we do need a lot more houses, so it makes sense to convert one into the other.
What people might find more invigorating is to see the local pub full as they pop in for a swift one on their way back to their new flat where the old Woolworths was
Not only would this help alleviate housing shortages with prime-location properties but also do great things for town centres all over the country. On a trip to the out of town retail centres there’s often little reason to go via the high street, but if you lived there you’d be walking past at least twice.
Think how revitalising that would be for the pubs and restaurants, and you might even stop for a little flutter or check what the charity shop’s got in stock as well.
Labour MP Clive Betts claimed that the high street has an “important social, civic and cultural place in our society.” I say rubbish – they’re an eye sore.
I’m sure it was once true, but today these mausoleums to a retail past do little for community spirit. What people might find more invigorating is to see the local pub full as they pop in for a swift one on their way back to their new flat where the old Woolworths was.
It could do wonders for Stafford. Not a silver bullet – some fields would still have to go and perhaps it would need accompanying measures to fully revitalise the town centre – but it seems to present something of a win-win if we’re willing to change how we see the high street.
Charlie Brandon is a recruitment
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