“Decline is Not Inevitable”: How Councils Can Bring High Streets Back to Life

Rowenna Davis, a Labour councillor in Croydon, explores why some town centres thrive while others decline – and what councils can do to turn the tide. The answer? It’s not just about flower planters and graffiti removal, but about building local incomes and a sense of belonging.

If you’re a councillor or council officer, and you want to improve your town or high street, things can feel a bit tough right now. I know I can feel that way walking around the town centre of my home in Croydon, past vape shops and closing down sales and homeless people in abandoned phone boxes. Businesses tell us they have to close because their customers have moved online whilst the council barely has enough money to keep the lights on at Christmas, so what can we do?

Well, the first thing to note, is that a lot of town centres and high streets are thriving. All high streets have their challenges, but internet shopping and austerity does not seem to have killed the bakeries in Crouch End, or stopped the bustling crowds of people returning for coffee at Hay or Rye or Alderley Edge. Why? In a word: income. Quite simply, if we want our town centres and high streets to flourish, we have to shift our focus towards making sure people have enough money in their pockets to sustain demand in local shops.

Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, is doing just that. Rather than focussing on the more conventional things associated with local government – the flower planters in the town centre, removing the graffiti – he’s relentlessly focussed on the economy. When I went to spend the day with him, we visited four of the biggest science and tech companies in the region. In each case, he asked them, What do you need to keep growing here? How can we support you to expand?

For Burnham, this growth has to be inclusive. He has introduced the Manchester Baccalaureate, a skills qualification that enables young people to do 45-day placements in the region’s most successful industries (he never failed to ask a business to consider increasing their placements on our trip). Early results show that half of the young people who do a placement in a company go on to work there. So, instead of young people feeling forced to move south to get a job, they can succeed locally, which means they can also spend locally to support Manchester’s businesses in a virtuous cycle. If the Labour government pursues plans to devolve skills budgets, more work like this could be possible everywhere.

In a world where people worry about isolation, fragmentation and anomie, our town centres can provide precious places where people come together to celebrate, connect and commemorate.

But if councils need to spend more time thinking about how people can go about earning a living in their communities, they also need to spend more time thinking about how to build a greater sense of belonging in town centres too.

Traditionally, we know that people had to visit town centres to do anything from buying an iron to getting their photos developed. Now all of that can be done online, we have to think what the high street can offer that nowhere else can. Oddly, that’s not so hard. In a world where people worry about isolation, fragmentation and anomie, our town centres can provide precious places where people come together to celebrate, connect and commemorate.

Sheffield is a great example. Now that shopping has migrated online, the city is evolving to become a more ‘experiential destination’. Walk around this old steel town now, and you’ll see two universities and a number of theatres. At its heart, they have revamped the old Coop department store into ‘Kommune’, a bustling independent food hall, providing space for new businesses and a fun place to meet and break new kinds of bread together.

Of course, this focus on ‘place building’ requires me to work very differently as a councillor, and challenges the conventional role of officers, too. It’s so easy to follow the train tracks and assume your job is over after you’ve cleared your inbox, shown up at the meeting or written the report, but those motions are unlikely to make the real difference. 

Instead, we are going to have to do the harder, messier, more challenging job of working with the community to create a shared vision of the place we want to live and work in, and then build the partnerships that are going to get us there. As a backbencher, I try and write to at least one new business or charity or university every week in an attempt to build alliances with people who might have the power to help regenerate our home together.

Decline is not inevitable; many town centres continue to flourish, and, with the right partners and approach, yours can too. 

Although it’s harder, engaging people in this way has the potential to be more impactful and exciting than conventional regeneration. A powerful example, covered by New Local, comes from the Test Valley. There, the council leader is urging councillors and officers to see themselves less as bureaucrats and more as community organisers. This mindset fundamentally transformed their approach to regenerating the town centre. Rather than presenting people with a plan they could tick yes or no to, they started with the question ‘What are your aspirations for our town?’ and built the vision from there. Whilst some people were concerned that this would lead to a move against development or house building, it actually had the opposite effect, with people listening to each other about the need for more homes.

So, if you work for a council, take heart. The road is not easy or simple, but the prize is great and possible. Focus on the big themes of earning and belonging, and pull in the partners you need in to make it happen. Decline is not inevitable; many town centres continue to flourish, and, with the right partners and approach, yours can too. 

Rowenna Davis is a Labour councillor representing Waddon ward in the London Borough of Croydon. Her recent report for Global Futures Foundation: Earning & Belonging, looks at the concrete steps leaders can take to turn the tide on declining town centres.

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