There’s life in the high street yet…but only if planners embrace change.

We have had the Portas Review, the Grimsey Review and government ministers wringing their hands over the state of the high street. However, they miss the point: Britain is oversupplied with retail floorspace.

Harking back to the days of overall-clad shopkeepers reminds me of King Canute’s efforts to stop the tide. The retail landscape is changing and we in the property industry, from investors and developers to planners must react accordingly. Retail now fulfils either a necessity function, or a leisure activity and to survive in the face of online competition from tax optimised, low-cost e-tailers, the environment we provide retailers with has to be attractive and convenient for their customers and offer efficiencies and value for the retailers themselves.

Walking down the secondary high streets of most of Britain’s towns, it's apparent many were originally devoted to residential use and have been converted to retail use at ground level. Many are now characterised by a hotchpotch of uses and To Let boards, or we can all think of a ‘zombie’ shopping centre struggling to be relevant in today’s environment. The government to its credit has identified this issue and taken a step towards resolving the problem with the recently published circular providing permitted development rights for the change of use from A1 retail to residential.

Local planning authorities should now be grasping this principle and condensing their retail offer in the historic retail core by encouraging their secondary retail pitches to revert to residential. This can be done effectively and simply, providing the political will is there to support the policy already in place. To overcome this, however, we need the planners to recognise the retail landscape as it is today and local authorities encouraged to forego their business rates income. Although the change will not happen overnight and the first residential occupants may not attracted to living between two takeaways, the arbitrage in favour of residential use will encourage the change and in the medium term it will provide a win-win solution by reducing the blight of empty shops, supporting investment and regeneration in the retail cores and increasing the supply of residential property. We can then have a sensible approach towards retail warehousing, without restraining it in favour of unviable secondary locations.