As part of our review of monitoring pride in place changes sought through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, we take a closer look here at the contribution of the retail mix and empty shops. We do this as part of providing practical guidance on using a suite of themes and indicators running across the Government’s Levelling Up initiatives.
Government perspective on ‘pride in place’
For insights on the government perspective on monitoring pride in place, we turned to the report published last year by Demos, Everyday Places: Creating strong locations to support daily life in Britain. This Demos report is one of the studies cited as providing insights into assessing what matters for monitoring pride in place and local area satisfaction in the UK government’s technical report, Levelling Up the United Kingdom: missions and metrics.
Eight themes for local area satisfaction
A key part of the methodology in the Demos report is measuring local area satisfaction as the mismatch between what people say are their priorities and their perceptions of actual provision. It does this for eight broad themes of housing, communities, going out, exercise, jobs, shopping, fresh air, transport and internet access; each comprising of measurable sub-categories. As part of the process, Demos’ researchers also asked people to select their most important regeneration theme and rank their four most important local, sub-category priorities.
Within the shopping theme, the sub-categories used by order of priority given were supermarkets (48%); local independent shops (28%); high street with national chains (10%); large shopping malls (8%); places to deliver parcels (6%). Within the broad category of ‘going out’, the highest priority was given to ‘local places to eat and drink’ (52%), followed by places designed for children (18%), local culture (17%) and venues for live entertainment and sport (14%).
Importance of shopping in monitoring pride in place
The Demos research on strong locations found that aspects of shopping played a prominent part in people’s perception of local area satisfaction. Overall, provision was most in line with people’s priorities for internet access and the shopping offer, and least for housing, premises to support jobs, and transport. The top regeneration priority by overall theme was ‘good local shops’ (17%), followed by ‘good transport’ (15%). Respondents’ most important sub-category priority was similarly found to be ‘good local shops’, followed by ‘access to fresh air and nature’.
The report therefore has a seemingly surprising finding that, whilst people on the whole rate the provision of shops in their area relatively highly, they also cite ‘good local shops’ as their top regeneration priority. The analysis by Demos interprets this by explaining that local shops are valued for a variety of reasons beyond just fulfilling people’s own retail needs and are treated as a kind of proxy for the overall socioeconomic health of a place. They infer that there is widespread regret about the perceived decline of the high street as well as desire to see it revitalised in order to support local businesses, provide jobs, act as catalyst for wider regeneration and engender pride in place.
Role of retail, hospitality and services
From our experience at People & Places in preparing baseline surveys of issues in over a hundred town centres, using the Revitalising Town Centres toolkit, we concur with Demos’ findings about the regeneration priority given to enhancing retail provision and tackling empty units. We would, though, say that this is as part of diversifying the wider town centre business mix that includes local places to eat and drink, which the Demos research separately recognised as important. We would also take a more nuanced approach in distinguishing usually positive sentiments for convenience retail, especially supermarkets that might not be in the town centre, from comparison retail, especially fashion, that will be concentrated in larger centres.
Similarly, in developing recommendations, we would be careful to acknowledge that it is the quality of the retail offer within the wider business mix that is closely linked to people’s sense of place. That said, we agree that Demos’ findings that the quality of the shopping, alongside hospitality and services, is both a practical necessity and a community reference point. “The quality of the local retail [and wider business] offer says as much for the emotional prosperity of a place as it does for its economic prosperity.” We would agree that seen in this light, the look and feel of town centre businesses becomes, at least in part, a public good, justifying greater policy intervention.
Policy implications
Demos rightly conclude that this has huge implications for the government’s current review of business rates. We would add that it also has implications related to relaxations to changing town centre business use. In the meantime, a related headline policy intervention is the proposal for high street rental auctions in town centres amongst the Levelling Up Bill’s practical proposals for town centres. We share the view in the Institute of Place Management’s initial response to compulsory rental auctions, that the most effective approach to reducing vacancy rates and improving the mix of use types, is for key stakeholders – agents, landlords, businesses, communities and councils – to work together
Welcomed within suite of Levelling Up indicators
We welcome the added knowledge provided by Demos’ strengthening places research and the government referencing such understanding as part of a suite of themes and indicators running across its Levelling Up initiatives. Other key metrics of ‘pride in place’ recognised by government include town centre satisfaction and engagement in local culture and community. We have used this knowledge to refine the metrics for understanding issues, developing solutions and measuring impacts for our support for UK Shared Prosperity investment planning and wider work in revitalising town centres.
Practical application through tackling empty shops
In practical terms, we will continue to work with associates such as Iain Nicholson, founder of the Vacant Shops Academy, in seeking to enhance the town centre business mix as a comprehensive, proactive and measurable intervention through the tried and tested ‘audit, engage, encourage, promote’ approach. Importantly, this is achieved in a way that seeks to boost wider outcomes through, for example, repurposing empty units for use by local arts & crafts, culture, creative and community groups and organisations who would love a space in their town centre but are frustrated by the barriers.
Opportunities for communities and place
Find out more about People & Places’ broad approach to boosting pride in place, including tracking changing attitudes to pride in youthful and disadvantaged places.
Read the guest blog from Iain Nicholson, founder of the Vacant Shops Academy on a measurable response to tackling empty shops.
The People & Places Partnership are creators of the Local Government Association’s national guidance for local leaders on revitalising town centres toolkit.
Nice post, really helpful post. Thank you for sharing.