A bold claim this but we can do it. We just need to think outside the box and be different… wait is that not the Ukip Mantra?
How many policies going back to 2010 have we come up with way ahead of our time and had them nicked from under our noses by Labour and more so the Tories. Let’s get busy again and make that difference. Let’s get the policy juices flowing and grow the interim manifesto which is very good and make it fantastic to mirror the resurgence of the party under Gerard.
The high streets of Great Britain are dying. The reasons for this are many and varied. Top of the list is the staggering growth of online shopping, coupled with car parking charges and the threat of crime. In the last twenty or so years, large out of town, free parking shopping centers based on the American shopping mall have also seriously impacted the high street. Also contributing is the extraordinarily large business rates for the even the most meagre size of shop. Charity shops signal the death of a town center or high street when you have two or more in the vicinity.
So, what can be done? Well, first of all, Local authorities have to relinquish the management of their high streets. Co-operatives of shopkeepers are best placed to manage their own environments. They can agree to a new coffee bar or charity shop or not. They can pay towards the upkeep, planting of shrubbery and set the standard of their own high streets.
Local authorities must be more proactive with offering cuts in rates payable for new start-ups, to give them a chance. Encourage entrepreneurship and assist financially, agreed business plans. Variety is the spice of life and the need to specialise, given the individual town’s history will help. Being inventive and different will encourage visitors.
High streets need to be a place to visit for not just shopping and something to eat; high streets need to be a place to go to be entertained. Blues, jazz and rock bars are always popular. Try to get in the Edinburgh, York or Leeds comedy clubs and you will be lucky without some serious forward planning. Art galleries, somewhere to go and express yourself through art. Dance schools. Offer a place for up and coming bands to hire rehearsal rooms. Recording studios. Pop up restaurants and bars are also popular. Encourage busking and street bands to perform instead of just at Xmas.
Variety has to be the way forward. Coupled with free parking and a clean feel safe environment and the high streets could be saved. It would also be prudent to cover large sections of the high streets to guard against the weather and ensure visitors a warm dry experience.
Globalisation is to the high street what foot and mouth was to the agricultural industry. This is where governments could act. The taxation of global companies such as Amazon and eBay with regards to retail is an enormous burden. This needs addressing.
Having stiffened and toughened the collection of the correct tax payable by these global companies step two should be encouraging through incentives for them to open high street stores, it has not done Argos any harm. It would be a job creator, a click and collect point. Popular items sold there and an interaction with their customer base they currently do not pursue or enjoy. Step three would be to reinvest that taxation in the high streets.
The alternative is the loss of the high street, yes things move on, modernization and change are to be embraced. The loss of many high street chains and the numbers of boarded up empty shops is a salutary warning. The high street is fast becoming a no-go area. An area that people look on now, not with fond memories and nostalgia, no they look upon the high street as a no-go area, a place to be visited only in a desperate rush for something of an emergency buy between the hours of nine and five. Their death and loss will be a great shame.
Ukip can lead the way here with some smart thinking and determination. I am sure some readers will disagree with my missive and deride what I have to say. Please do not do that, instead invest your energies in how you can too contribute and shape the high street of the future.
Lets, as we have done before, lead the way and be ahead of our time.
Kevin, Yes I live in Kent, but not in Thanet, but about 60 miles further west in a staunch supporting Conservative area. Absolutely no chance of getting elected here under the UKIP banner to try and change things. I have been targeted by the local conservatives many times including the past 2 months who offered me a safe conservative seat if I defect They’ve got no chance. Serving in the same party as TM, they must be joking. At least in Thanet, one stands half a chance of getting elected under UKIP.
Sorry to be so abrupt. All governments can do is set framework. Cutting taxes is basic. the rest is for free choice. Not town hall diktats.
But if UKIP can generate some advisory fees from the property industry its all in a good cause
I was discussing High Streets with work colleagues yesterday, and one colleague was amazed that I was able to pretty much describe his local high street in Kidderminster without ever visiting it.
Well-known multi-national corporate brands like McDonalds, Starbucks, Costa Coffee, KFC. A number of other independent fast food outlets or cafes. Charity shops. Betting shops. A newsagents/convenience store. Barber shops. Mobile phone repair/accesory shop. Vaping shop.
Does that sound familiar? It probably does.
Many High Streets now lack ‘individuality’ or an independent store that gives people a reason to travel there. I recalled how when I was younger, me and my brother used to walk to West Bromwich town centre to buy CDs from an independent music store. When I lived in Acocks Green, I once found myself travelling to nearby Shirley because they had a musical instrument shop and I needed guitar strings on a Saturday.
In an age of online shopping, where everything we need is available to order with a few clicks of a mouse, sometimes it is nice to go on an adventure and go somewhere where they have what you want which is unique.
But it all becomes very soul-destroying when you go and visit other places around Birmingham and find that “all the High Streets look the same” to quote a song by Blur.
I’m reminded of the time last year when I visited Gibraltar; the main shopping area along Main Street there reminded me of what Dudley town centre used to be like years ago when I was a kid. ‘Big name’ stores, alongside independent ones, all with something unique to offer.
While I’m no avid shopper myself, I do wish the best to any budding entrepreneur who wants to start up business by setting up a shop and offering something unique that will ‘draw’ people to them, away from their local identikit High Street chains and charity shops.
Next to come will be building thousands of tiny box flats everywhere all over the old high streets nuts like they are attempting on our parks now… Its all coming together for the globalists…. we have to watch every corner now for their march…
How much more unpaid work do we have to do ? We have nearly saved the country. Now we got to save the UK real estate business..?
The high streets are full of so-called charity shops , run at a distance for and by a liberal managerial elite.
Saving UK real estate business…also saves UK banks and Pension funds.
Sorry no more charity work from me
A good debate has been started here.
What UKIP needs to do, though, is to come up with a really radical idea:
Rates should be abolished completely.
They are a bureaucratic nonsense.
They are also an extremely unfair “tax.”
Instead, the national government should provide the Councils with funding they previously received from rates.
This will mean that these funds will have to come from other taxes and savings.
But such a policy would be radical and would bring in the support and votes.
No good tinkering with a system which was past its sell by date many years ago.
UKIP needs policies which will get it noticed.
Alongside this, there should be a policy of free parking ( like the policy on free hospital parking ).
There should also be zero fares buses into towns and key centres to encourage less car usage.
As for Council funding, it should be broadly the same for all local authorities throughout the UK.
Based mainly on a central government allocation per person, but other factors being taken into account.
Alongside that having a policy of wherever in the UK you live, you are given the same level of services by your local authority.
In other words, a truly UNITED Kingdom, where all citizens are treated the same whether they live in Land’s End or John O’Groats.
Average non headline policies will simply not do for UKIP, unless people are happy with just 5% of the vote.
Anthony Webber
The radical idea has to be the introduction of an “on line” business tax, in order to level the playing field. This would be a shot in the arm for our High Streets and also a huge bonus for the Treasury.
I want the High Street to survive and flourish. But it has to adapt to changing circumstances. There is not point trying to compete head-to-head with large retail chains and on-line mega stores.
High Street businesses have to play to their strengths. One big advantage the High Street does have is personal service. Also, there can be an advantage to live above the shop. And there is no reason not to have an on-line retail business run from the shop.
Also, one disadvantage is that shops tend to be open when potential customers are at work. I would have thought if all shops in the High Street can work together they should have late night shopping; customers come into town to shop and then a social activity. Shops would then be closed all or part of one other day to rebalance the workload.
UKIP Members are not short of ideas. Who is the “UKIP High Street Ideas Co-ordinator” who can help get something appealing in the Manifesto?
Running a small business with upto a dozen staff, i will always agree with the thrust of this but one vote winner which ukip has always ignored, in spite of my best efforts to point out the potential, is how VAT could be tweaked to provide a huge boost to the VAT-registered small business sector AND be the vehicle to provide a future to our high streets, saving a lot of jobs in the process.
There was talk in yesterday’s budget of dropping the vat threshold from 85 to £43,000. Happily it didn’t happen but what gets forgotten is that the tax is retrospective at any threshold. Once exceeded, it does not start at 85 or 43,000, it starts at 1. Propose to abolish that retrospective penalty and every small business would have a powerful incentive to look further into ukip’s other ideas. There are over 5 million small VAT-registered businesses.
Conversely a penal VAT rate for non UK based online distributors such as Amazon would be an immediate game changer that could raise billions while favouring uk based outlets.
From my business point of view, VAT is very easy to operate, albeit expensive. But the political classes including ours to date don’t appear to grasp its political potential, yet at least.
That sounds sensible.
“…..Charity shops signal the death of a town center or high street when you have two or more in the vicinity……”
Wallingford has four charity shops within a small area and It’s ‘high street’ is certainly dying. High business rates and greedy landlords are definitely a factor. Another factor is Costa, Starbucks, KFC etc. These organisations detract from the individuality of an area. Maybe they’re part of the globalisation conspiracy which would reduce everything to uniform awfulness.
Four charity shops, that’s nothing in my local High Street we have no less than 17 charity shops, and in one part of the High Street there are five of them in a row. Apart from that the High Street is made of estate agents, barbers and ladies hairdressers, cafes, three supermarkets, various restaurants and takeaways. The number of independent shops can be counted on one hand. However no independent bakeries, no green grocers, and only one pub, that being a Wetherspoons. This is in a busy market town in the South East, where supposedly lots of well off people live, or at least that is what we’re told. From my perspective this is not the case. I always look forward to visiting Yorkshire, where there seems an abundance of good quality shops, namely independent bakeries who sell great cakes and savouries (unlike the south) green grocers and the like.
Same where I am. Landlords who have empty premises who ‘loan’ them to charities pay no rates. However they get them heated and ‘guarded’ free. And that is really better-than-free land banking.
Landlords must be pushed into dropping lease prices by taking away these incentives. Perhaps even compulsory purchase . Lets say a Pound a square foot after a year empty.
I bet that would change things !
Lease it — Or lose it !
This is a good debate. I congratulate Stephen Place for another very good thought provoking article.
He and the terrific Janice North must be two of the best writers on this site.
As above.
Landlords cannot rent at any price. Some buildings now have negative value.
Some have resorted to knocking down and that creates lots of empty land.
There is no demand at all for most shops.
https://www.deflation.com/uk-shop-prices-send-a-signal/
You must live in Thanet?
‘Greedy landlords’ – not the case.
Commercial property has been a dreadful investment in general in the high street. Landlords find they cannot find a tenant almost at any price sometimes. Then they are liable for business rates even when the property is empty.
The fact is no one wants to rent high street shops.
Take a look at this chart and compare shop prices versus house prices.
And rents have been similarly collapsing. If you have got stuck with an empty shop, it is a terrible proposition and no one wants to buy or rent.
https://www.deflation.com/uk-shop-prices-send-a-signal/
What about compulsory purchase?
The Govt buys an asset and could pass legislation to make use of the land outside of the local councils’ remit -bypassing NIMPY planning games (Councils are too slow/corrupt/ self-interested) and then it either regenerates the properties (turns them into affordable flats) or refurbs and re-rents them to small businesses at affordable/ controlled rents appropriate to the locality’s economy?
The asset remains ‘on the books’ / the landlord gets out / and the locals get support.
Otherwise the decay just continues. Sometimes intervention is appropriate.
My local high street is 50% empty. There is no need for this to be tolerated.
The arguements about corporation tax are possibly the best argument showing up our education system imaginable.. Profits on most companies run at about 5to 10 % of sales. VAT is 20%. Tax on wages etc for the whole supply chain is probably at least in the region of 20%.
Profits are all that the OWNERS get
So the diference between 100 % and 0 % of profits is still only 10 % as against all other taxes of 85%. Which just demonstrates stupidity of gargantuan proportions in the Labour party.
The problem and the answer are simple. The Retail maintenance Act which Ted Heathwas forced to pass before he could even apply to join the Common Market.As I’ve said before the purpose was to destroy British manufaturing and promote Retail. Aided and abetted by EU supported Phillip Green..
This took almost every vestige of control over their own products and put it in the hands of shopkeepers. Who don’t even know how to measure it. As for giving them responsibility for Quality and performance.. It actually is laughable !..Manufacturers make in quantity. its what they do. So to give controll of price quality and performance away leeds usually to bankruptcy for most except the really bright. In the view of most UK manufacturers. Support of the internet retailers who are totally predictable becomes inevitable. And in fact we were talking about it happening when the act was passed as well as the predictable rise of the supermarket. So Repeal of this foolish act would return natural importance to those sectors which had something to offer. Others actually could be helpless. They rely on manufacturers for support. Quality and marketing and innovation.
That is 90 % of the problem solved. Simple . Into the manifesto with it. You will still get your cheap pretty dresses and shoes and handbags cheap from abroad But Quality and innovation and service and brand will count.Cheap disposable ( andenvironmentally bad ) will face the same problems as everybody else.
There are arguments about this of course but mainly come down to price fixing.. Consider that, consider that women no longer traipse from shop to shop just wasting time looking for a penny off marmite. And onanonanon.
and if you are still not thinking ask yourself “Why on earth would the EU insist Before everything else”
And if you are still not convinced, all other remedies will suck up taxpayer money, whereas this is self controlling
Sorry, I think its full title is ” The Abolition of Retail Price Maintenance ” or some such The ” abolition” was added as an unbeatable carrot to the public..
And if you are still not convinced consider all thr ramification to society as a whole . Think about the throw away culture of retail, theDisposal of poor quality , and shortage of resources, and so on.
And if you’ve got this far, look at the heading photograph.
The city centres of Edinburgh, York and Leeds are quite different places to the high streets of town and village centres thus different remedies are needed. Our local village where I shop everyday is desperately short of parking and thus UKIP councillors should be fighting tooth and nail with retailers to provide more parking and challenge any development that takes away current parking facilities. In some cases a by-pass will reviatlise traffic congested villages and towns making shopping easier and more pleasant. Young people are not as price sensitive as their parents nor do they engage in the weekly shop at the supermarket to the same extent and so this should help the high street. One thing they do demand though is parking and ease of purchase.
I am sure that we can all agree that it is unacceptable that mega on-line retailers deomicled for tax purposes off-shore must be made to pay their fair share of corporation tax. The companies act lawfully – it is the spineless government that is reluctatant to take action.
The revival of the high is doable but business people should not expect subsidies – all a government can do is help level the playing field somewhat but the initiative must come from the business communities themselves.
A way to deal with this would be a compulsory ‘Amazon Tax’ . Just 5% on TURNOVER. ( On every single item or service ) This would net the revenue £440,000,000. No dodging as its not based on profit. In other words a £10 book would net 50p.
That half a billion to be used in say 20 ‘critical towns’ to subsidise regeneration projects jointly with the private sector but only for SMALL businesses.
Let’s say I want to rent a shop, say for selling flowers and my business rates were £10000, This could be halved or even waived depending on what I as a business could bring to the actual town in terms of employment / apprenticeships etc. The councils could then hire street cleaners / waive parking in those enterprise zones and aid regeneration.
The money DOES NOT go towards central government or to local authorities to spend on ‘hanging basket diversity co-ordination officers’ or any other such tripe
All very good ideas, but they will never ever come to fruition as UKIP will never win enough seats locally or nationally to get this off the ground, being only 5% in the opinion polls. Even more so with all the constant talk of TR and Islamification etc.
Unfortunately Islamification is a huge issue and will only get bigger it cannot be ignored.
First BREXIT
Second BREXIT
Third BREXIT
. . . .
929 th . . . . shops; islamb et al
That 50p may be the reason they sell it in the first place.
Yes , there are vestigial signs that our Civil Service has noticed and is cunningly starting to realise that the EU is the problem And are making moves towards removing. a law or two. This is strange considering Hammond. It is probable that he doesn’t notice.
Hammond chooses not to notice quite a few things which might be of benefit to us, being independent and outside the European Union. Talk about selective hearing, it is also a case of selective sight, sense and intelligence.