Columnist

Can the UK high street make a comeback?

The UK high street is being written off.

This is in no small part due to the change of shopping and consumer culture brought about by the internet’s offering of convenience and accessibility to products and services across the globe.

In the UK alone, ane-commerce study expects online retail spending to exceed £52 billion in 2015, a 16.2% increase from the £44.7bn spent in 2014.

But despite the growth of internet shopping, which shows no sign of slowing, it seems the UK high street is managing to make an economic recovery.

Less store closures and fewer job losses

According to the FRP Advisory, almost 750 UK stores closed in 2014 due to their retailers falling into administration, which also led to 4900 job losses.

Though these figures do not make for happy reading for the UK high street on their own, they are actually an improvement on the number of shops which closed under administration the previous year.

The 35 percent survival rate of shops in 2013 grew to 42 percent in 2014. 50 percent of jobs were also saved by rival retailers who bought the properties of closed stores.

People still prefer high street shopping

A joint study of 2000 shoppers by Groupon and Kantar Retail found that 58% of consumers prefer the in-store experience to online shopping.

Of the 2000 nationwide shoppers surveyed, 71 percent said they would visit the high street more often if there were a greater range of independent and smaller businesses.

Perhaps this could pave the way for high streets to return their focus to a more localised economy. Richard Jones, vice president of national accounts at Groupon, advises smallbusinesses to take “a back-to-basics approach of having physical stores with specialist staff on hand.”

But retail is not the only offering a high street has to make itself bustling again. Developing communities which also combine a greater variety of residential, hospitality and leisure facilities are seen as a recipe for a thriving high street by leisure property specialists Fleurets.

The chartered surveyors highlighted a number of key transactions in the second part of their 2015 quarterly report which they believe show “appetite and confidence in the UK hotel, pub, restaurant and leisure sector is as strong as ever.”

A change in Sunday shopping hours?

Part of the Chancellor’s summer budget was the proposal to free up Sunday shopping times for larger stores.

Current laws allow small shops to remain open all day on Sunday, but restrict stores over 3000 square feet to six hours of trading.

The final decision on allowing bigger stores longer opening hours will be left to local councils and their elected mayors.

This could boost the high street economy and serve the needs of weekend shoppers, but there are also fears that this could affect the business of smaller stores which consumers supposedly crave.

High streets are developing physically

The change in a high street’s appearance can help to reinvigorate its appeal to shoppers too, something that government and local councils seem to be acknowledging.

£70 million of London boroughs’ New Homes Bonus is being allocated to projects across the capital, with one of the seven key themes being the ‘physical improvement’ of high streets.

Crane hire specialists Emerson Cranes, who have overseen (literally) many redevelopment projects on UK high streets, believe from experience that “construction and redevelopment are often a strong signal of the potential for future economic growth in that particular area, especially on a high street filled with commercial buildings.”

High streets should continue to adapt

Despite the potential that the high street has to continue in its re-emergence, figures from a 2014 survey show that net closures of stores are outpacing the rate at which they are opening.

But of those closures, the vast majority were phone stores, women’s fashion retailers and travel agents. This may reflect a trend in shoppers preferring to do that particular type of shopping online.

If small businesses can cater to what modern customers want from a high street store, implement the right technology into the customer’s experience and integrate their brand into the local community, perhaps the high street will see greater footfall in the coming years.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sean Fitzsimons .