What will happen to our towns if we all shop online?

There's a pub and a nightclub - so you don't go near the shops when walking the dog of an evening - loads of youngsters about.

Of course, if you want to drink coffee, get all dolled up and socialise - it's the ideal place to live!

Oh my goodness, not for the first time have I really wished for a 'like' button on this forum, I so agree with so many of these posts

The key word in your statement is "COTSWOLDS" !! Bourton on the water? Stowe? Cirencester? Try surviving in non monied/tourist trappy Wigan , Accrington, Rochdale! Use it or lose it is all very well when you actually have money to blow in an art gallery coffee shop craft shop perfumery(yes I've been to bourton) and all the other arty farty outlets, most town centres are need for affordable food/clothing/toiletries etc. We'd love to " use it" if only the chains not making mahoosive profits cut and ran leaving us abandoned premises that can never be filled

The large Tesco Extra, just out of our town centre, killed off a lot of little independent shops where I live. It opened years ago and now there are shops with boarded up windows or are used as pigeon coops. Online shopping and these huge supermarkets have a lot to do with death of our little towns.

Our nearest town centre is full of charity shops, small cafes and nail bars. There are three ‘developments’ on the edge of the town which sucked out the heart of the town centre. (Since Covid, many of the shops there have closed). Shopping therefore involves a lot of walking, or car parking fees, which makes it difficult for the elderly, the disabled, mothers with small children etc. Therefore is it any wonder that people are using the internet?

Interesting, the Sunday Times supplement have listed a lot of successful small retailers. They all look decidedly up-market!

Mummer
I can assure you that if you ever see a roundabout going nowhere here in Essex you can lay money on the fact that there will be a development of some sort.

Doodledog

I'm not sure I understand why people won't pay for parking but are happy to pay postage and packing charges to get items delivered, particularly when they are the same people who are complaining about the death of the high street.

My local council brought in parking charges a while ago. they were 30p, yet people were furious, and claimed to be travelling to different towns or out of town retail parks where the oaring was free. it would have cost more in petrol to do this, so it always struck me as cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

Most towns now have new build housing estates on the outskirts. I think that this is a cause of a lot of congestion in town centres, and leads to a need for parking charges. If the council subsidised buses (in this area free bus passes are not available to those under 66) from the outlying estates they would reduce the demand for parking. That would also mean that there could be designated spaces for those unable to get around even with a bus.

It is, IMO, very short sighted to make policies on the assumption that everyone has a car, and that everyone wants to use it for relatively short journeys. It would be better for the environment, and for congestion, as well as for local economies, loneliness, employment and all sorts of things if people could more easily get from one small town to another, and to town centres from outlying estates and villages without taking a car.

The assumption (wrong) that those over 66 would be willing to struggle to do their shopping via bus?! Really? Nonsense. Our gen are the first to have cars from early age and one we bought , not leased by daddy! We're independent still got all our marbles and personally I literally cannot remember the last time I used a bus to go anywhere! Make cars impossibly expensive for all those teens and up to 23s that clog up the roads drive like lunatics and cause the majority of accidents, make THEM use the buses and give THEM a free bus /train pass! I would really used that in my teens early 20s when we were broke and starting out. But I suppose young gen don't want to have to wait for anything they want what we've taken 50 years to gain- in their teens!! The demise of the huge shopping malls is somewhat bitter sweet. Jobs lost, yes. However the monstrous white elephants filled with the same dross countrywide and promoting over spending , Debt and the pursuit of junk we don't need using dosh we don't actually have should be a reason to applaud. The quicker we're able to transition to retail that's local and independent for essential stuff with the non essential stuff being bought online or click and collect to be freely returnable when we realise we don't want/need/suit it after all -the better.second chance spending online is really a good idea. How many times in past have items lain unworn and unreturned because of the sheer hassle? Exactly! Shopping has changed forever gone are the days of shopping for a new spring/summer/holiday outfit by trudging down to town or city on ' a day out' treating it like an event only visited 2-3 times a year at most!

Politics gets in everywhere. Nice straight forward discussion again spoilt by biased politics. Successive Governments over the years regardless of which party have eroded all social funding. So stop blaming which ever party you don't support and making everything political.

I am unconcerned.
Lets say I want house paint. If I go to shops I have to hunt for the shop that has the colour options that I want and then buy testers. After i have chosen my colour I then have to find a shop that has enough of the colour that I want in the paint type that I want. This is not fun or recreational. I drive from shop to shop using up fuel and sometimes paying parking charges. Online I order my testers on line and these are often free or at least very cheap....same with wallpaper samples.....I order the number of cans that I need and its all delivered to my door. Its the same with loads of DIY and similar dull but necessary stuff. If I want a large or heavy item, why wouldn't I get it delivered to my door rather than struggle with it myself? I think that town centres will have to change to being leisure and service venues.
The last time I went into my local city centre was for my covid vacs, not the booster, that was local. I have to say I don't miss it one iota. I never enjoyed supermarket shopping and was doing it online long before covid.
My local bank is about to close so that will be one less reason to go to the local village...actually I don't go there often because I have an old frail dog who can't be left alone or get into my car....got to say I don't miss that either.

Naninka

How do you tag someone's name?

@Naninka

I am among the few who detest trawling around shops. I do use Amazon a lot. I live on a bost in a marina...it is simple having items delivered rather than driving miles and not being able to find what I want. I buy clothes on Ebay...I prefer preloved good quality clothes to flimsy new stuff. I do shop in village coop and click and collect at Tesco.

I shop almost exclusively online simply because I don't really like the layout of our local town. It's designed like a crossroads which necessitates far too much walking for me to cope with now. When we really have to go there we usually park in Morrisons for free for two hours, usually long enough for us.

But the town itself still has lots of independent shops plus M&S, Morrisons, Lidl, Sainsbury's, Iceland, WHS, Waterstones, several banks and opticians, shoe shops, small clothes shops and countless hairdressers. Three chain stores and the fishmongers closed over the past two years, but have reopened as something else, so there are not too many empty premises. Inevitably a few more coffee shops have appeared (mostly independents), and are popular, so perhaps they encourage people to shop in town.

There were always a lot of charity shops in our town and I thought they would flourish in the wake of Covid, but several have closed. A notice on the door of one said 'We've closed. We can't take any more of your junk' Rather rude and ungrateful I thought!

With the best will in the world, people on average salaries are not going to think about the long-term future of local towns and shop in their high streets when they can get everything they want on line cheaper and therefore satisfy their short-term needs of making their income go further. Internet deliveries also bring energy savings for the customer who doesn't have to travel and then pay for parking - as has been said, another case of local councils shooting themselves in the foot. The thing which can't be bought online is the social contact that unfortunately the heavy government messaging has persuaded us to minimise - so unless we all decided to frequent coffee shops and restaurants more often, our towns will gradually die in the form we know them now. Maybe they should though because going down one high street is very much the same as another - the same shops, the same chains, more money for big business that has an outlet in every town. Truly independent shops should, I feel, be supported, but they too can have an internet presence if they want, and maybe that's how independents need to evolve.

Half of our town centre has already been turned into blocks of flats.

The town centre where I live has been slowly dying for years, with the closure of many large stores-M&S closed here just last week, the nearest one, apart from their foodhalls, is miles away, so I will be forced to shop there online. Independents are all very well and we do have a few in the centre, but they are very expensive (to cover rent/rates, I suppose) and don’t always last long. Community spaces are a great idea, plus affordable housing a possibility and both are sorely needed here. I also note the lack of facilities/youth clubs for younger people and improvement could perhaps help to lower petty crime locally as boredom is seemingly endemic among the young here. We just need creative thinking from the councils and not tired old BID teams who often don’t have a clue how to regenerate the local area to serve the needs of the people who elected them! I’m sure our town centres will survive, just in a very different guise to what many of us are accustomed to!

Our greedy, local council has made it almost impossible to shop at the local shops as they charge a fortune to park. So the shops close down and, presumably, the council will get less money from people parking. Senseless.

Towns started changing when shopping centres were built. Any shopkeeper who chose to remain in his original site instead of renting space in the shopping centre soon found himself losing trade.

I was shocked revisiting Paisley in 2011 for the first time in forty years to discover that the entire High Street which I remembered as having many marvellous shops was given over almost entirely to charity shops, one or two travel agents and perhaps a building society. All this due to a shopping centre that had syphoned off trade.

In Denmark the shops in all towns are chain stores, so it doesn't matter whether you are in the Copenhagen or in a small provincial town, you are being offered the same goods from the same chains. A small amount of local florists, hobby shops etc. still exist, but if I need a cobbler or a dressmaker willing to do repairs I have to go to the nearest German town.

Germany still has more independent craftsmen and shopkeepers. I believe this is due to it still being possible for sixteen year olds to leave school and get an apprenticeship - a system that has been more or less done away with in Denmark.

I am not sure that online shopping will make so much of a difference. Having been sadly disappointed in the quality of bedlinen I bought online, I have resolved to shop next time I want household linen where I can inspect the actual ware.

What does make a difference is the fact that smaller towns already only have only one supermarket and one or two chain stores. If you want anything that none of these stock you buy it online as this is cheaper than going to the next town in the hope that there is a greater variety there.

Things change nd so do shopping habits. Tough on town centres but they will adjust and provide what people want. After all, we don't send small boys up chimneys any more now do we ? I dare say there was great uproar when the change came about. too. And the lives of women have change too - why should young women want or need to spend their lives 'going to the shops' when they have found other, better ways to use their lives ? Change happens whether we like it or not.

Our town is being replaced by student accommodation, although to be fair, a recently closed big shop is being revamped and replaced by smaller shops.
I like going into town to shop, but by the time I’ve paid for fuel and parking (2.50 for up to hour) only to find that a Boots offer I’d gone for is ‘online only’ (my fault for not reading carefully) and the M&S clothes I’d seen in line and gone to buy are out of stock in the shop. “Why don’t I order them for you and you can collect them 2 days later”(with more fuel and parking fees), I often use online.

greenlady102

Naninka

How do you tag someone's name?

@Naninka

Do you mean copy their post or highlight the name.
To quote a post just use the quote button ( at the right of the username bar.
To highlight a posters name use the * on your keyboard write name and then * at the end of name. But no spaces between.

It isn't just the shoppers going online. I used to live in Bath and the rents/taxes were so high that retailers couldn't afford to keep going. Not all towns/cities have councils that own the premises as Bath do, but they do set the commercial council tax.
I left 18 months ago, having watched the number if independent shops fall dramatically.

There's also the question of parking which is insanely expensive in many places, and there is no guarantee that you'll find a space. No wonder people would rather spend the cost of parking on online delivery.

Most councils seem not to care about the shops on the high streets, only how much money they can extract from car drivers. Some councils are sensible and give one or two hours free, others want to take as much as possible without thinking if shops close because people cannot park at a reasonable price business rates revenue will fall.

I really miss the days of browsing the shops and trying things on. It was a Saturday pastime when I was younger. You could see if things suited you as well as fitting right. Now it's a case of fingers crossed and having to send things back quite often particularly with so many sizing anomalies between shops. It's also hard to judge the quality of fabrics online.