Our high streets aren’t doing well, at least not with shopping. Governments and councils lament the rise of the online purchase, without knowing how they should try to compete.
In an attempt to address the problem, the Welsh government commissioned a research report, Small Towns, Big Issues, published in 2021. Following from this, the Senedd’s public accounts and public administration committee’s 2024 report on town centre regeneration makes a number of recommendations, covering such things as the repurposing of empty properties, business rates relief, and the strengthening of planning policy to favour centre-of-town development over edge of town retail parks.
But no amount of reports, good will and council strategies will bring down Amazon, bring back the local grocer or make a local bakery more profitable and secure than another Greggs. We need a new strategy, one that accepts that the convenience for people to buy something online – not wanting to spend their weekend hunting for CR2032 batteries from a local retailer – will not go away.
High streets aren’t dead. We just need to change what they’re used for.
What do Valleys high streets look like today?
In recent years, I’ve moved to the South Wales Valleys near Abertillery and early on my partner and I would tour different local high streets at weekends, conducting a very haphazard survey of what a high street can function as today.
Brynmawr seems to have deteriorated the most – a case of a retail park truly taking over. The sheer convenience of an Asda, Lidl, Home Bargains and The Range has seemingly proved impossible for the local retailers to compete with. The high street seems truly past tense; we’ve walked past a couple of shuttered-up former shops, and there’s a cafe that’s sometimes open, but usually not.
Ebbw Vale has a good run of three or four charity shops, one cafe, some nice additions of a local sustainable cosmetics shop, a furniture shop, and the dominating factor of any high street that still has healthy footfall: a Wetherspoons.
Blackwood and Abertillery high streets
Our favourite place to go is Blackwood; it has the novelty of several lovely cafes (instead of the usual one that closes before 4pm in other places) and it’s fantastic for charity shops – there’s a run of about seven or eight, good turnover of stock, and high-quality stuff. We like to wander around on a Saturday, get a cheap but tasty brunch, give ourselves a £10 or £20 budget for charity shop finds, and magpie our way through at the shiny things.
And then there’s Abertillery, our closest high street, just on the edge of productive. It has a lovely library, a thriving independent optician’s and pharmacy, two charity shops, a good value and popular hairdresser, the obligatory vape shop and betting shop, a post office/convenience store, and an absorbable number of chains in the form of a Greggs and a Boots. It seems to be having a very subtle revival, which I assume is down to Blaenau Gwent Council offering six months’ free rent on a vacant shop front (so long as you have the following six months’ rent available to finish your year’s lease). A record store and a small second-hand furniture store have recently sprung up.
Taking inspiration from a high street success
Our very unscientific analysis of the Valleys high streets tells me one thing: they’re not going to compete with the ‘big box’ shops. So, perhaps we should start by looking carefully at what does work on the high street: charity shops. If they keep popping up in all our high streets, maintaining a reliable presence with hardy volunteers, they must be doing something right. Instead of seeing charity shops as a sign of decline, they should perhaps instead be regarded as the flagship of a local circular economy.
They seem to be doing better than ever, likely because they’re cheap and we’re all suffering from the rising cost of living. They also tap into people’s growing wish to step away from fast fashion and to reuse things with plenty of life still in them, rather than spending money we don’t have.
So, I implore: taking charity shops as inspiration, please stop trying to compete, and let’s do something different.
The high street as a circular community hub
I would like to see Welsh government – in partnership with councils – instil a new vision for circular high streets based on the following principles:
- Reuse first: charity shops have clothes, games, books, household items, and some have units that specialise, like the British Heart Foundation and their furniture shops. It’s a wonderful way to close the loop of the circular economy: keep wearing and using those clothes until they fall apart, and then pop them along for fabric recycling.
- Think beyond charity shops: Benthyg, the borrowing library for THINGS, is a vision worth guaranteeing in every council area, ideal for both small space and low income. For example, you can borrow a mower twice a year or a tent for the occasional camping trip. This stuff doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg just to sit in your attic. Share it. Don’t stash it.
- Community, not profit, first: People don’t go to local high streets to spend a lot of money. They go because it’s their local area and they want to say hello to people they know, support local business, and feel the comfort of a real place, not an anonymous identikit retail park. Welsh government and councils should be actively supporting community-focused coffee shops, repair cafes (bring your stuff to repair – and learn how to fix it yourself! Genius!), chatty cafes (where certain tables are designated as places to sit and chat to other customers) and general community space for things like book clubs, resident meetings. Basically, for anything the community can think of and want to do, there should be a space you can do that for a low rate – a knitting circle, a Pokemon Go meeting point, a place for kids to get their bikes fixed and learn how. There’s endless potential, if you let the people lead and make the space available for them.
No, it won’t make a lot of money but that’s not the point. The high street should be a place to be, not just shop. Stop trying to fight Amazon and start being something Amazon could never hope to be in a million years: the heart of your community.
