If only there were a city-centre Lidl! I'd love to be able to shop at one. But they're out on the periphery, and it would mean a walk and then a bus-ride out and a taxi back.
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The decline of town centres
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Smethwickian
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Agreed.
Many towns around me in the Midlands will never, ever again sustain the number of retail outlets which their town centres currently provide.
In an ideal world the councils, large landowners and shopping centre landlords would work together to come up with realistic, practical plans for consolidation and redevelopment for a wider variety of uses including residential. And as Teflon Lettuce posted, councils should not be so intransigent when it comes to categories of permitted use.
But unfortunately developers and councils are too easily wowed by yet more shiny proposals for new shopping precincts, malls and supermarkets outside existing town centres, which then simply become ever-more moribund.
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Teflon Lettuce
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another thing I can't fathom is why so many councils are so quick to rubberstamp new office developments when there are acres of empty office space in the town centre already
business rates income
Teflon Lettuce
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but they only get that income if the offices are occupied....
underbank
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I thought empty properties are liable for business rates too after a certain period of time?
underbank
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Yep, our council have fallen for a developer's proposal to convert a few acres of derelict land into retail and office space - literally half a mile from the town centre which has plenty of empty shops and offices! What's even crazier is that the proposal is that the council will pay the developer for the properties and then try to sub let them to tenants, so basically, all the risks with the council and all the rewards to the developer -at the same time that half the town centre is derelict. Some councils really have no financial acumen.
Puffing Devil
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The High Street as a shopping location is now very much irrelevant to many people. Retail has moved out of town or online. Banking and Utilities have moved online. Those that want to shop can be served by a smaller number of specialist retailers.
Rather than saving the High Street, we should be using the empty spaces for housing and leisure; the retail units should be consolidated into a smaller retail area, incorporating market spaces for start-up retailers at a low cost. Some may be viable, many are not as the customers have left and are very unlikely to come back. There is an oversupply of space that could be used to meet some of the country's housing need.
Rather than saving the High Street, we should be using the empty spaces for housing and leisure; the retail units should be consolidated into a smaller retail area, incorporating market spaces for start-up retailers at a low cost. Some may be viable, many are not as the customers have left and are very unlikely to come back. There is an oversupply of space that could be used to meet some of the country's housing need.
thejuggler
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Because the used offices do not meet the current market demand. If there is no demand new offices don't get built.
BRX
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Move the retail that has gone to out-of-town areas (rather than online) back to town centres. Provide decent public transport to make it accessible to everyone, without needing cars. Implement planning policies that encourage the regrowth of local centres (so that everyone is within easy walking distance of things like food shopping) as well as main town centres. This is all inextricably linked with transport policy.
The amount of space that could be freed up for housing, by eliminating hugely wasteful out-of-town shopping complexes, is orders of magnitude greater than that which can be freed up from under-used high streets, where the existing building stock, and use mix, is usually far from ideal for housing.
underbank
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Why? What do you then do with the huge empty car parks and buildings that are now redundant? Why force shops back into unsuitable property? Far better to just accept reality that people don't want to shop in town centres and that retailers don't want to be shoe-horned into old fashioned and unsuitable properties, and re-purpose them to home/leisure use instead.
It's usually also far from ideal for shopping too - that's why the retailers moved into larger, open plan, purpose built out of town locations with better access for deliveries and more efficient lighting/heating.
BRX
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From my point of view a car-dependent society is fundamentally unsustainable, exacerbates inequality, and inevitably creates alienating urban environments and makes horrendously inefficient use of land which in the UK at least is a very finite resource. So my starting point is to move away from car dependency, and that means totally rejecting the concept of amenities that are designed entirely around convenience for the car owner, which is what out-of-town shopping complexes are. People choose to shop in these places because it is made more convenient for them to do so rather than use town centres. That's entirely down to transport policy decisions. Change the balance of convenience (which means disincentives to use private cars as well as incentives to use public transport) and people will return to walkable town centres with good public transport access. There's no shortage of evidence that this is the case.
underbank
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Or they could just do more shopping online.
Teflon Lettuce
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oh? so explain how in many towns acres of office space gets created... then fails to get occupiers... along with all the offices already there that are also all for rent... you can see it in most towns.... acres of office space being offered for lease almost on a permanent basis... and never any change to the hordings... indicating no takers
BRX
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That would not be a bad outcome.
BRX
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QED.
The whole point of in-town shopping is to avoid unnecessary car use.
Towns which try and tempt shoppers back to the centre by providing cheap parking miss the point - you just make your town into a congested car park.
Bletchleyite
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Which means you get big and bulky stuff delivered to your house (like you used to) and that means the idea of shopping for just fresh food, top-ups of stuff and things like clothes in a town centre become viable again as they were...which surely moves us away from the retail park and back to the high street?
The irony is that it's successful centres that charge an arm and a leg, less busy ones don't/can't.
Was in one in Glasgow today , seems to have gone downhill , had very few of their doughnuts etc on display , seems to be new staff every time i go . Once i was in people had ordered breakfast meals and they told everyone who had paid and ordered that there is no hash browns and they could get a refund on the hash brown . Not sure whos behind the UK timmies but certainly somethings amiss
BRX
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Indeed...and part of the business model for the large shed retail park operators is that they shift the cost of the final part of delivery to the customer - essentially they build something like a logistics hub but instead of a few vans delivering all the products to their final locations, someone drives a car from, and back to, every single final location. Completely wasteful, and the cost is disguised because it's not included in what the customer pays at the till.
It makes sense to have distribution centres outside of towns, close to fast/long distance transport routes... but not to then have everyone drive there individually from the town.
Totally agree. My office is very close to where I live but is still a pain to get to. All of the buses are heading in to town in the early hours. For an 8 start I get the second bus of the day, for a 7 start there is no bus and I walk. I would love to work in the city centre which I can get a train to from the end of my road at the crack of dawn. As a result of our offices location many people working there not as conveniently located as me drive. The car park is many times the size of the building we work in as it makes no sense for many people to use public transport to get to. Right next to our office is a huge retail park which I doubt is used by many people who don't drive, I rarely use it for this reason despite it being the biggest retail park near to where I live. Getting the train to the city centre is easier.
Sorry, I rambled a bit there. Been a long day. Ha ha. One thing I wanted to add was that there is plenty off empty office space in Liverpool city centre but I am guessing the rent is higher so we end up with every one driving everywhere and shopping facilities reflecting this.
Teflon Lettuce
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Actually, talking of cost.. one way to change the fortunes of town centres.... It's accepted that rents/ rates are more expensive in town centres due to them being the more "desirable" locations... part of the reason why out of town retail parks have been built is because of cheaper rents/ rates... so if the areas where retail/ office parks are built are now the "prime" location and town centres less desirable why don't councils re-assess the rates?
thejuggler
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Provide some specific examples of these many towns with acres of empty recently built office accommodation and I may be able to answer.
As far as I have observed there has been very little speculative new build office in most towns in the last 10 years.
Teflon Lettuce
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try Cardiff for one...they're just finishing the new BBC Wales HQ in the city centre there on the site of the old bus stn.. directly opposite an Office block tower that's been advertised as available to lease for the last 10 yrs!
Rochdale is a good example here. I couldn't believe it when I saw that a town of such a size is now offering 3 hours of free parking in the council run town centre car parks.
thejuggler
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I'm pretty sure Cardiff is a capital city, not a town.
Most large office blocks have some space available most of the time. Like hotels they don't need to be 100% occupied 100% of the time to make a return for the investor.
It also needs to be appreciated which organisation owns the property. Most offices are owned by very large property owning companies with billions of pounds worth of property. The voids are their available stock and whilst it may be empty it as a value. On billions of pounds a few million a year in lost rent across a wide portfolio isn't heartache.
DynamicSpirit
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As an example of this, a few days ago I was suggesting to a friend that she might try cycling sometimes instead of driving everywhere. Part of her response... No, it's too dangerous to cycle because there are too many cars and lorries on the roads, so she has to drive!
Bletchleyite
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This is why the only way to get a good uptake of utility cycling is Dutch style segregation, and is why a move to that is so important. It might be perception, but it is impossible to break it.
DynamicSpirit
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Some quick googling suggests that councils don't have the power to do that. Rates (at least, in England and Wales) are set as a proportion of what the Government considers to be the rentable value of the premises, with the same formula used everywhere. There are some discounts/exemptions if the calculated figure is very small, in order to help small businesses.
Explanation by Manchester City Council:
ManchesterCityCouncil said:
Frankly, it does look to me like a pretty rubbish system which must bear a lot of the blame for the decline of traditional town centres - making it harder for them to compete with both out of town retail parks and the Internet. There really ought to be a system that takes account of the environmental and societal impacts of different locations, and therefore charges more rates to shops and businesses in locations that cannot be easily accessed by public transport.
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