What: Fixing business rates is key to helping the industry survive

Why it is important: Hundreds of small town centres are at risk

In truth, there was overcapacity on the high street even before Covid-19 accelerated the shift to online shopping. Many retailers had failed to keep up with the changing shopping habits of young consumers and were unable to compete with innovative online-only rivals.

Irrespective of the reasons behind particular company failures, there are wider repercussions for Britain’s towns and high streets that cannot be ignored. Analysis by the Centre for Retail Research estimates that more than 15 700 shops closed last year, resulting in some 176 700 retail job losses. At stake is not just the future of international fashion destinations such as London’s Oxford Street, home to recently collapsed Topshop’s flagship store and a vast Debenhams outlet. Such shops acted as high-street anchors across the country, attracting local trade and footfall. Their demise puts the future of hundreds of small town centres at risk.

UK government must play its part in slowing the retail collapse to give time to a post-Covid transition to the high-street of the future. There is no reason why non-food, bricks-and-mortar retail should die. One area where the government should act immediately is to reform the business rates system (property tax). The 12-month business rates holiday, introduced in March last year after the pandemic first struck, needs to be extended further.

Retail has a place on the high street of the future