Business

We need a Northern Ireland high streets taskforce

Retail NI is calling for a taskforce to help revitalise the north's high streets
Retail NI is calling for a taskforce to help revitalise the north's high streets Retail NI is calling for a taskforce to help revitalise the north's high streets

CREATING 21st century high streets was a challenge before Covid-19; now it's an even bigger one as we chart the long way forward for retail, hospitality and our economy as a whole.

Quite simply, we now need a fundamental reinvention of our high streets - it’s going to require new levels of partnership between the Executive, councils, business and wider society to achieve all of this.

Since the start of the pandemic, place leaders in our town centres have been managing its impact with the certainty that the ‘old normal’ is not a recipe for the long-term future. As habits change, then so must our retail sector and high streets.

The newly-established High Streets Taskforce in England quite rightly describes this regeneration framework of being the four Rs: repositioning, reinventing, rebranding and restructuring.

These four Rs require a new vision, a changed offer to consumers, better stakeholder communication and perhaps most important of all - changing the governance of our high streets.

That is why we need a Northern Ireland High Streets Taskforce which creates this new partnership model and starts us on this new beginning.

Retail NI has written to the Communities Minister to propose this as part of the Executive’s wider economic recovery response package. The Executive has made a good start in supporting high streets, with rates holidays, £300k for Business Improvement Districts and allowing greater flexibility on pavement café licenses. But they must go further.

We have also called for a regional version of the £50 million Reopening High Streets Fund to support local councils to do even more in safely reopening their high streets and ensuring that consumers feel safe in returning to shop and socialise.

Moving from two metres to one metre social distancing is crucial for retail and hospitality in leading the high street recovery, and we urge the Executive to look at how this can be done in a safe way, drawing upon good practice in other countries.

It is not just our high streets that needs to be regenerated. We must also regenerate the ways in which we approach and tackle the numerous issues we face, and focus on a big, bold and radical plan for 21st century town centres that are family-friendly with more independent retailers, a vibrant living community and above all else, which are fun places to visit.

Our high streets are not dying; instead they are going through a reconstruction process which will result in very different retail sector.

For Retail NI members, it is not in any way about managing decline, it is instead about managing the future. That future will no doubt be the blurring of lines between retail and hospitality with our two sectors moving ever closer to create a very different experience for the consumer.

Consumer behaviour is rapidly changing, and people want something different from their high streets and I believe that smaller, more agile and tech-savvy retailers who can adapt to this tidal wave of change will be the ones who will claim the post Covid-19 future.

:: Glyn Roberts is chief executive of Retail NI