Can the next government save our High Streets?

Interview with Dr Steve McCabe, Associate Professor at Birmingham City University.

Transcript

00:00Right, what we've seen is a sort of a fairly steady decline on the high street insofar

00:08as that people, they're quite happy largely to sort of go and look at goods in the shops,

00:14but when it comes down to it, and I've certainly seen it, indeed I would admit to do it myself,

00:18you then look and see if you can get a comparable sort of item online, and quite often it is

00:24cheaper.

00:25How have recent government policies, including the levelling up plan, impacted the retail

00:31sector, and what specific achievements have been made in supporting retail across the

00:36UK?

00:37I mean, by and large, what it would come down to is hard sums of money, and of course the

00:43whole thing about levelling up, if I may say so, it was a bit of a sham insofar as the

00:48sort of councils had to bid for money, so it wasn't, you know, it was never going to

00:54work in the way that they sort of said, or suggested it might do, in terms of making

00:58everywhere as vibrant as central London.

01:01Clearly that was never going to be the outcome.

01:05So yeah, I think that if governments are really serious about this, then you've got to put

01:11lots of money, but of course, you know, what this election is telling us is that there

01:14is less money for everything, and I think the priorities are the sort of public services.

01:19All the major political parties do recognise there is a problem on our high streets.

01:24It's likely that Labour will win the general election.

01:27Do you think they can turn things around?

01:29Will we return to our traditional places of retail?

01:32I think that, you know, what we've arrived at will probably be as good as it gets.

01:38I think the sort of high streets do need to be sort of rethought, sort of their purpose.

01:42Yeah, we are not our sort of parents or our sort of grandparents, where sort of that was

01:46the only way that you sort of got hold of sort of goods.

01:49It's a different world, but undoubtedly you go to many high streets and they look pretty

01:54dilapidated, and of course it's a bit like sort of seeing somebody with all their teeth

01:57missing or sort of a good number of their teeth missing.