Town centres in England losing their appeal to shoppers as retail no longer ‘dominant’

The High Streets Task Force analysed footfall from more than 150 towns and found that 44% provide a wide range of different services to their communities and so are now classified as “multifunctional”. This type of town centre with less focus on retail has increased by 8% in the last year, according to task force figures.

The body, which was commissioned by the government in 2019 to support the transformation of high streets, says such multifunctional towns and districts that serve their local area have fared better during the Covid-19 crisis.

Professor Cathy Parker, research lead of the task force, said: “The historic decline in footfall we’ve seen doesn’t mean that all high streets are failing: it shows their function is changing. Our research indicates that during and after lockdown, local high streets have been people’s lifeline, for essential retail and services, and as a gateway to local parks and greenspace. People are rediscovering their local areas and rethinking what they want from their high streets.”

The report also calls for a re-think of how towns are classified and urges planning authorities to focus on how busy towns are instead of just defining them by the amount of retail floorspace they have.

Task force chair Mark Robinson said: “The pandemic has brought forward changes that usually take years to occur. It is clear that multifunctional town centres are on the rise and we now have the opportunity to accelerate this to meet the challenge of bringing back into productive use redundant retail space.”

The task force provides training and data and has a programme of footfall counting and analytics that is being rolled out across the country. Its data provides annual, monthly, weekly and daily footfall for town centres to support decision making and monitor economic recovery.