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

I feel lucky in picking where I live now, tbh it is thriving here and 3 more small shops have opened up. We have only 2 charity shops and no betting shops. It is a market town with a lovely ambience, butcher, bakers, greengrocer etc

There is a template drawn up for the future pf the high street which will not exist in the next generation as the way we know it.

Town centres will be service towns for what you can't do online. It will be coffee shops, restaurants, spa's, hairdressers and so on.

Towns will be turned into apartments, muses, flats and houses. The land being parks and spaces to mingle

There will be a little more in places of interests and to visit however this is the future. I have been told about these plans by a friend in the industry

I live in a small market town that prides itself on the many independent shops. Unfortunately they are mostly those that I would only use once in a blue moon if ever, fascinators, jewellery, antiques et c and the few food shops are only for those with a much better budget than mine, no affordable clothes or shoe shops at all. As I don't drive and the next town is 50 minutes away and not very well served by bus ,I do almost all my shopping online and have for a few years now. I also find it too hard to carry much shopping home from the local supermarket now so have all that delivered, only occasionally venturing into the town centre for the card shop, post office or bakers

I agree with JaneJudge. That's the way things are going. I moved to my current address almost 40 years ago and, at that time, we had a lovely small town with lots of small shops but still three or four large, well known, shops. Gradually about two-thirds have shut down and are boarded up with the remaining ones being charity shops, £-shops/Bargain shops, vaping cafes (so called because you can buy vaping accessories) and occasionally an empty shop will have a temporary shop for a few months while "all stock must go".

Our local town has nothing to offer but has at least 5 supermarkets, the county city no longer has a Department store. Why visit when you can sit at home in comfort find what you want easily, not pay astronomical parking fees and have to buy lunch?
The councils who run these towns need to make them more appealing to the public. Low rents for shops other than Charity shops and low parking fees. Sometimes you cannot get a space at the local Sainsburys as the parking is free and only a short safe walk from the town centre.
It is not the buyer who has killed them but the councils who have allowed multiples of the same shop that is all other towns and not encouraging private enterprise. This started long before Covid.

The lovely town we used to shop in put the parking charges up from under £2 to £8. Coupled with lunch at a minimum of £5 a head it meant spending £20 before we bought a thing we’d gone out for.

The nearby smaller town has a Tesco’s with a free two hour park. And we can pop home for lunch.

No brainier.

Maybemaw The Trafford Centre went into administration with mind- boggling debts.

Not many shops left now ...even in the shopping centres which used to be full of lovely chainstores as well as a lot of independent small shops selling allsorts ...the City centre is almost bare apart from Charity shops and coffee shops ....and this is a big city .....Metro, busses etc all suffering as no one is shopping any more...Universities have been closed for so long ...people working from home ....the only busy part of town is the seafront ....from my home to the beach is 1 minute ....this weekend, lovely weather ...walked from one village to another and back ....en route there are no less than 6 coffee shops, then in the middle two coffee and fast food vans, then at the other end, another three coffee shops ...and just off the sea front yet another 2 plus 4 more in the village ////all I can say is we may not be able to get 'shopping' but we're sure ok for coffee ............ and no, I refuse to shop online .......too much hassle to send things back ! I USED to, but after having my card scammed never do now if I can help it !

Times change people adjust.Not one of the Never [sad}used to be like this.?

We buy a fair bit online, we have a 100 round trip to our small city for main shopping to it's just not possible to keep popping in for one or two items. Food shopping and other odds and sods are done n a small local town, 40 mile round trip! And the odd thing in local village shop 10 mile round trip!! So as you can see online is much easier. Yes I do feel guilty and do try to visit real shops when I can as I still like to try before I buy and actually it's nicer to see the products for real.. The downside of living in a remote area!!

It’s not just shopping online. There are so many out of town outlet centres that most high streets can’t compete with. We went to a new one in Cannock recently.

All very high end and ridiculous prices but very busy with long queues to get into some shops. First time I ‘ve come back empty handed!

Mummer you say apartments are difficult to sell Where on earth do you live? Yes there are blocks of flats with cladding problems that are dificult to sell, but otherwise flats sell well and briskly. In my local town, those small industrial premises that always hid around the shops have all been redeveloped as flats, 2-4 stories, brick-built, interspersed with a couple of houses. When they come on the market they sell quickly, the same with flats in the village I live in.

Our historic High Street in Devon now has lots of Charity shops, but I have noticed how much their marketing has improved. Now there are neat, colour coded racks of clothes, and often a good selection of books and bric a bric. Some specialise in vintage clothes, which I remember from younger days!

. I know they have limitations, but I do buy in them sometimes and that's got to be better for the planet than bulging wardrobes of clothes that we don't wear often.

Hi Brownow1564

You have my sympathy re Scotland and council funding. The SNP have reinvented themselves over the years but I remember when people called them the Tartan Tories.

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.

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.

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.

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.

greenlady102

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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