AT chats to Dr Lucy Montague, Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Manchester School of Architecture, and recently appointed Special Advisor to the Built Environment Select Committee, about the decline of the high street and what should be done to reverse it.

Photo by Richard Fu.

Congratulations on being appointed special advisor to the Built Environment Select Committee. You are going to be focusing on its inquiry into the UK’s high streets, so what is your remit and why is the inquiry important?
The inquiry is extremely timely. UK high streets continue to face unprecedented challenges, and as they are directly related to the local economy and community, it is vital to our towns and cities that government understands how best to support them. Select Committee Special Advisors are appointed as experts on a topic and their role is to help the committee to navigate through the inquiry. The role includes recommending potential witnesses to give evidence, advising on how to interpret the evidence given, helping to brief the committee members each week, and contributing to the report and recommendations that will be delivered to government.

Why has the high street changed so much in recent years? What are the main drivers, and what has been the overall result?
I recently completed an extensive three year study of high streets with my co-authors David Rudlin and Vicky Payne, funded by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition for 1851 and published by the RIBA, in a book titled, High Street: How our town centres can bounce back from the retail crisis. Our research found that the current problem isn’t really a crisis on the high street per se, but actually a crisis in big retail. The retail development model is broken and unviable right now. Major legacy retailers have also been subjected to asset stripping leaving them financially vulnerable and leading to the downfall of many big high street names in recent years. The impact of this has been made more acute by the advice given to local councils, who were encouraged to make big moves to prioritise the presence of major retailers on their high street. The demise of those big retailers has then left many high streets without the anchor stores they had become dependent on.

Estimates suggest we now have about 40 per cent too much retail space in the UK. Our data showed there is already a big shift away from retail-dominated high streets and towards experience-based high streets. The big growth areas are hospitality, food and beverage; catering to people’s desire to spend money on doing things like going on holiday or having a meal or beauty treatment. What we’re seeing is the birth of the post-retail high street.

High Street: How our town centres can bounce back from the retail crisis, by Lucy Montague, Vicky Payne, and David Rudlin (RIBA Publishing, 2023).

What can be done to stop the decline in the short to medium term?
In our study we looked at 100 case studies to understand what has happened and what we should be doing now. We examined data both pre- and post-covid, as well as talking to a lot of people to understand the stories of these different places and why some are thriving whilst others struggle. What we found was that what works does vary from place to place and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. But generally every place would do well to tackle vacancy by providing incentives for independents, like low-commitment pop-up leases, subdividing units, and recycling fittings. Places with a higher proportion of independents have fared a lot better than those reliant on major retailers. That’s not because indies are more resilient but because where one fails there will always be others willing to give it a go, invest their money and try to find their market. This can in turn increase diversity and lend an authenticity and uniqueness to the high street that improves its ability to compete with neighbouring centres.

How can architects get more involved in regenerating our town centres?
The biggest contribution architects can make is to approach the high street not with a new fixed vision of the future but as a place that can evolve and adapt many times. In design terms this means flexible small- and medium-sized units rather than large ones. This can apply to both new-builds and the conversion of existing buildings, including subdividing larger units and department stores.

Wherever possible it is also preferable to ensure good permeability in order to increase footfall for the businesses, which in most places means restoring the historical street pattern. At the same time, and perhaps contrary to generally accepted wisdom, it would be wise to resist the urge to pedestrianise local high streets but instead find ways to integrate parking without huge detriment to the environment. If high streets are hard to access by car while out of town retail parks provide convenient access and free parking, you are gifting them the win.

And finally, look for opportunities to bring any and every use that can be on the high street back into the town centre rather than out-of-town. Retail schemes aren’t really viable just now, so anything that will materialise needs to be mixed use and led by office or residential in order to be viable. Think creatively about what else could be (re)located there including public or civic uses, such as healthcare facilities or council premises, as well as things that have tended to end up on the periphery like offices and hotels. All of these things help to concentrate activity on the high street, maintaining a successful town centre.

Illustration by David Rudlin from High Street: How our town centres can bounce back from the retail crisis.

What other levers can be applied to make the necessary changes happen?
Our research found there were some policies which are proving very damaging to the high street and need reform. The most fundamental of these are business rates, and there are two main issues with these: first, they are always out-of-date and based on previous valuations of the property, so in a declining economy there is an unfavourable mismatch.  Second, they disproportionately penalise physical retailers over online retailers who pay a mere fraction in tax. If you want to have any physical retail at all, then this needs attention.

The other highly problematic area of policy is permitted development rights and the extension of Use Class E. Initially it allowed the conversion of retail units to pretty much any other town centre use (with the exception of licensed premises such a bars) without prior approval and to housing via a fast-track approval process. Earlier this year it was extended even further, so that commercial properties of any size can be converted to housing and without the previously required 3 month vacancy period which was already very minimal.

While bringing vacant units back into use is of course sensible, and increasing residential density in our town and city centres will simultaneously help high street patronage and the housing crisis, this extremely relaxed approach to PDRs introduces a danger that we will end up with housing in the wrong places and a fragmented commercial offer which struggles to remain viable. What we need is not less planning but better planning. Local authorities need controls to ensure that commercial activity is consolidated into a central area that will be supported by footfall, and that residential conversions can only be beyond that, where appropriate.

Are you optimistic about the future and if so why?
Cautiously optimistic, yes. Although its death has been announced many times, the high street has actually proved to be incredibly resilient over the decades, evolving as and where necessary. For example, we are now seeing a new trend emerging with online retailers taking space on the high streets. This creates a ‘halo effect’ where consumers have the opportunity to see and touch the products they receive, thereby increasing online sales.

None of this means we can leave high streets alone to sort themselves out, but rather we must continually ensure we have the right policies, funding and initiatives to ensure success in economic and community terms. What we do now will have a huge impact on how quickly, how equitably, and to what extent they can successfully evolve and I am sure that the House of Lords inquiry will hugely help yield progress in those terms.