Is the High Street ever going to recover?

Where there does seem to have been an upturn is in the localised smaller shopping centres. Market towns and those edge of the big city roads with small businesses. Places people can walk to or catch a local bus.

Personally I wouldn’t be sad to see the demise of the Shopping malls and their like with the same stuff wherever you go and a return to more individual shopping.

I live in a small market town. We have no big chain stores.

We have a Tesco, not a huge one and 2 Co Ops. Aldi is supposed to be arriving before long.

Various independent shops, some been here for years, some open and only last twelve months or so. But not many shops are closed for too long, which is good.

Lots of comments on local Facebook page about deliveries not being delivered, or going to the wrong address.

Online shopping all very well, but it certainly wouldn’t be much if there were no shops to go to.

I have been to Tescos first thing this morning, then on to the butchers and bakers. Later will go down to the library and newsagents.

Would hate not to have them all here.

I'm disinclined to blame any one sector for the decline of the High Street. It has been happening since before the pandemic and became a vicious circle. Commercial rates were high, shops closed, council's needed income so raised rates etc. In a way, the bigger stores colluded with the move to online shopping by having a much more limited selection available in store than online which pushed people towards online shopping. I think councils needed to think differently about how to manage High Streets to encourage people back into town centres. My local town has a heavily used retail park and the town centre mall is fairly busy but the actual high street is a ghost street. I'm not sure what the answer is.

Sadly I concur with what Grandmabatty says.
I do think the High Streets in cities will not return to the ones we have known but small towns and suburbs may do better.
It is depressing for now but maybe once councils have done something with empty shops it will look better.

I hardly go out of my market town for shopping. I can get just about everything here.

Here’s a little story about small town shopping.🙂

I went into town and it started to pour with rain. Really pour. I need an umbrella I thought and popped into the umbrella, handbag shop. When I presented my debit card, it wouldn’t go, the connection was down.

Never mind I said, I’ll go to the Cashpoint up the road and come back to pay in cash. But you’ll get wet she said. Take the umbrella. So I did.

And came back to pay for it😬

I have done pretty much all of my Xmas shopping online. On the few occasions I have had to do real life shopping, it's been awful, long queues, terrible traffic and parking, and lack of availability of items. Why would I want to repeat that.

I think high streets could recover if they went in for a mixture of more specialist, niche, boutique type shops along with a range of attractive cafes and restaurants. ie make them a more recreational destination rather than for less interesting yet necessary shopping for food etc. Thus 'going into town' could be an enjoyable activity, a choice rather than a chore.

As Grandmabatty says, the High Street was in decline pre- Pandemic. I remember going to a talk by Mary Portas about how towns should try to re-invigorate their centres. Not necessarily more shops, but more opportunities for socialising.

We will miss shops but not sure the younger generations will

Our local decent shops have long gone. Our fish shop closed our butchers has turned into a fast food store. The stores in the village a mile away closed their deli butchers and fresh fish counters when pandemic started. They have never reopened and won’t be in the future.

The shops that remain are sheer convenience stores no good for someone who actually cooks from scratch as I was brought up. They only sell prepared ready to cook meals which I do not eat or want.

I have placed an order online for free range poultry and fish I cannot buy in the local shops as the choice there is very limited. The high street now consists of too many charity shops tattoo shops takeaways nail studios. It’s apparently what we want but not me so I will happily shop online.

I still shop in person and unless more people do the same the high street as we know it will be a thing of the past. No use complaining then, it will be too late.
I like to see, feel and compare quality of what I buy which is not possible online. It also gets me out and among people.

Small businesses could never compete with the buying power of Amazon and food retailers cannot compete with supermarkets.
Small boutique type businesses can sell on Etsy with no overheads and a worldwide audience.

It makes financial sense to purchase online. High streets will become a place to eat and socialise in coffee shops.

I love our coffee shops which often have a craft type section as well, or speciality foods, bakery etc. Also our bookshops with coffee stops inside too.
Sometimes it seems that coffee makes the world go round!

I think the high street will be a joyful place to browse for a special gift and to socialise rather than a place to do the weekly shop.
Though, having said that, we do also have a Farmer's Market in the town centre twice a week.

This little town high street was killed off when the bypass was built diverting traffic away from the centre but not solving the through traffic problem. Morrisons and Lidl were built on the immediate outside of the town killing of the greengrocer and one of the butchers but the other butcher still remains with a very good business and getting better. Two little independent coffee shops thriving as we don't have one of the bigger chains, many nail bars and hairdressers, tattooists and vape shops. There are several very good farm shops locally but their prices are higher than the supermarket for vegetables (not organic) and meat although this is higher quality. we can get everything here but not in the way many of us had become used to. I confess to having a weekly Ocado shop so I'm part of the problem.

I recently read that High Streets will become places where we go for services eg hair/beauty salons, tattoo parlours, coffee shops etc rather than go to purchase things. To my mind, though, there’s a limit to how many times you need to visit a hairdresser and it makes for an expensive cup of coffee if you have to pay for parking as well.

There are things I don’t much want to buy online, such as clothing, make up and perfume. My local town has nowhere to buy clothes any fancier than M&S or Primark so you wouldn’t be able to buy a wedding outfit for instance, and no one sells ‘premium’ make up, for which you have to go to a bigger city. The local anti-car campaign doesn’t help encourage people into town, either.

I think we’ve definitely seen the end of the department store. In London recently I came across the first high street Ikea. It was two floors and had room settings but large items had to be ordered.
Even John Lewis is struggling. I have shopped mostly in local individual shops this Christmas.

Our local town has seasalt, John Lewis, Jigsaw, Oliver Bonas, Waterstones, FatFace, White Stuff, Boots, various opticians, several jewellers, various other independents. It was bustling when we went there yesterday and the shops were packed.

We live in a City centre and have no butcher, baker or greengrocer. M&S has moved out too.

We are lucky to have so many independent boutiques, independent baker, ind. cafés and restaurants, butchers, fishmongers, + a great market.

But it will be US, who will decide if the High Street survives. If we all shop on line- it just won't. A town centre cannot survive on cafés and charity shops - plain simple.

oh and nailbars and Estate Agents!

my small market town is surviving and doing well. Locals appreciate that we can walk around and get just about anything we need, so much so that I am intent on cancelling amazon prime, which I had for free postage. There are always people shopping and lovely items to be had as well as everyday things

We live in a historic market town which due to a large well known shopping centre being built years ago has gradually become a run
down place with little of interest; a sad shadow of what it was before.
It’s use it or lose it. Too late for us.

I doubt we shall see a resurgence in the High Street generally. Prices are higher than online, the range of goods on offer is narrower, most shops don't deliver and they are not open 24/7. Although I enjoy bookshops they can't possibly carry the stock that online sellers like Amazon can carry. Estate agents are in partial competition with the big onliners like Rightmove. We may see more personal service shops like coffee shops, nail bars, hairdressers, etc., but high rents and business rates will kill many of them. More shops will become residential. The very poor will likely rely on local shops if they cannot afford broadband.

And I, for one, will be desperately sad, to lose our town centres. And the UK has to realise it will be the only country to follow in this trend with the USA.

Continental town centres will survive, as they are loved and cherished by locals, and on-line shopping has just not taken over (at least yet).