ATCM Chief Executive's Blog - Saving Britain's High Streets - Simon Quin

Saving Britain's High Streets - Simon Quin
Wednesday 17 March 2010

The last blog entry noted that I was in Darlington at a round table looking at how the money provided by the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Arts Council was being spent to bring vacant shops back into use. This was an interesting event with a good number of examples of schemes around England that were making a real difference. Tomorrow the theme continues as I am participating in the Retail Week Conference aimed at devising a Manifesto for Town Centres in Birmingham. This event brings together leading retailers and policy makers and features good practice experience in Plymouth, Birmingham and from the New West End Company in London. It is very encouraging that Alex Gourlay, Chief Executive Health & Beauty at Alliance Boots, Steve Easterbrook, UK Chief Executive McDonalds, and Jeremy Collins, Head of Retail Development at John Lewis are amongst the retail speakers. Some of those contributing have had a long-standing commitment to town centre management and BIDs, and been supporters of ATCM, but it is good to see other retailers involved as well. I am optimistic that this level of engagement can start to make a difference. ATCM is committed to help with taking this agenda forward. We are one of the supporting organisations for tomorrow's event but we are also doing two other significant things in the next couple of months. We are publishing a new research study called "100 ways to help the High Street". This will be an online guide to different kinds of support that can be offered by local authorities and town centre partnerships to make a difference to their high streets. It has been generously supported by the Improvement and Development Agency and the National Skills Academy for Retail. We will let you have details of how to access it when it is available. We are also featuring ways to support the high street in the World Congress programme. This looks not just at the experience in the UK but in other locations as well. We are featuring both good practice examples and also holding a policy debate about the role that central and local government can or should take to support retailing. We are also planning on exploring how retail theatre can be applied to town centres as a whole in a session deliberately designed to challenge traditional approaches. If you are trying to support your high street, you will really benefit from reading our 100 ways, from attending the World Congress and from being part of the ATCM network. If you are reading this, you obviously know where we are, so feel free to get in touch.