High Streets for All

A good idea to subsidise rent in those small "hole in the wall" newly empty places. As suggested, look to Paris, and prioritise feel-good shops, like cheese, vegetables, wine etc. as well as small family restaurants and cafés.

Also, in some areas the local mini-high streets have been lost to very upmarket retail outlets, and to high-end, bars, restaurants, eateries. This leaves local communities with only large supermarkets, or even nowhere to buy food and other essentials. My locality used to have a baker, a greengrocer, a 'dairy' corner store, and a couple of other ordinary neighbourhood shops. Now it mostly has bars and restaurants, and one extremely pricey convenience store with little fresh food. Instead of returning the centre of London, the West End, and etc, to pre-Covid levels and type of activity, local areas all over London should be redesigned. There used to be rates reductions for 'essential' local amenity shops - perhaps this still applies but is not much help for small bakers and greengrocers, etc, given the staggeringly high rates and rents in London. This scheme should be upgraded, and made fit for purpose, so that communities can have their local shopping centres back. Instead of focusing on returning central London and the West End to 'business as usual', funding, energy and expertise should be poured into redistributing the arts, leisure and hospitality industries into local centres all over London. A major redesign is vital - do away with the tedious long strips of busy road with lines of shops along them. Make centres away for the road, put in 'village greens', shift the housing off the main road. Each new high street and green area could have its own characteristics. All should provide support facilities and environment for working from home. Reinvent the local high street, decentralise London, make it sustainable.

Agreed and we need to make it easier for businesses to operate. The high rents in London make it very difficult for small businesses to open and make profit. We need a dialogue with landlords to try and get the rents reduced.
To make local High Street attractive and useful we need a more active role by the council. In Italian towns there are strict rules as to what kinds of businesses can open and where. We don’t need more fried chicken and betting shops opening, so unhealthy and drag an area downhill. And about some guidelines on the aesthetic look of the high street shop fronts?