Shropshire Star comment: Traditional high street is changing

Talk about somewhere having a traditional high street, and it will conjure up a picture.

Many primary school age children say they have never visited traditional high street shops such as the butcher or greengrocer

But not for the very young. They won’t know what you are talking about.

Older folk will bring to mind a variety of shops and services, with newsagents, grocers, banks, and so on. For children, if they visit a high street at all, the reality may be a few chain stores if they’re lucky, some charity shops, and empty premises awaiting new occupants.

They don’t know what they’re missing. And a survey has borne that out.

A significant proportion of primary age children have never been in a shop like a grocer’s or a butcher’s. Over three quarters said their parents’ shopping usually came from a large supermarket. Over a quarter did not even know what a high street is.

If children are the future, then the survey makes for a grim read for shopkeepers, councils and local agencies doing their best to ensure our traditional town centres are not ground to dust by the rise of online shopping, out-of-town retail parks, and general trends affecting footfall.

The challenges facing high streets and town centres have been analysed many times over in recent years but this demonstrates clearly the scale of the task facing town planners.

It is clear that as shopping habits change, and many if not most people now shop online to some extent, our high streets need to work harder than ever to drag people in.

While many lament this, these same people will, in many cases, also admit that they rarely visit the high street.

What to do? It’s incredibly challenging, but change is a constant and rather than fight against it, perhaps the best option is to embrace the change and try to think more creatively about how to draw in visitors.

A concept that has gained traction is to make town centres “destinations”. It’s a case of saying, if people are not going there to shop, then we’ll encourage them to go there for other reasons, and then when they get there they will shop anyway.

It’s a way forward that holds more promise for some towns and cities than others.

The historic, attractive, and interesting have trump cards in their hand. The less well favoured have their work cut out.