Can Shapps & Portas save the High Street?

The government is planning to support ailing High Streets across Britain, after accepting ‘virtually all’ of the recommendations made by retail guru Mary Portas.

The 28 recommendations included the creation of dedicated ‘town teams’ to manage High Streets and also more affordable parking.

Minister of State for Communities and Local Government, Grant Shapps, announced the government was accepting the recommendations from Mary Portas and also going further in a bid to turn High Streets into the heart of local communities once more.

Proposed measures include a new High Street innovation fund, distributing £10m of taxpayer money to restore the use of empty shop units.

A combination of a stagnant economy and the unstoppable growth in online shopping has placed our High Street retailers under increasing pressure.

Can Shapps and Portas save the High Street?

We continue to see some high profile retail failures, with Game the most recent example seeing 277 of their 609 stores shut immediately following their administration.

This naturally has an impact on both equity and commercial property investors, with a greater impact on the latter when looking at some of the most recent failures.

Whilst the proposals from Mary Portas could have some positive impact on those High Streets that participate in the schemes, the face of retail in the UK needs to evolve if it is to compete with the Internet in the future.

Most commercial property funds have the advantage of holding other sectors in addition to retail, so their fortunes are not entirely linked to the health of the High Street.

Where retailers are tenants in commercial property funds, they tend to be the larger and more established ‘blue chip’ retailers, rather than independent retailers or start ups.

The health of the High Street is important for investors, shoppers and local communities. We hope that Shapps and Portas can together bring a new lease of life to our local shopping centres.

Photo credit: Flickr/bisgovuk