Rip out ugly clutter to help revive UK high streets, says thinktank

Exclusive: Report says restricting cars and freeing up pavement space could be a cheap way to bring back shoppers

The long decline of the high street is a problem that has gripped British governments for years. But what if there was a solution no one had considered before – doing it all on the cheap?

Spending less money is, admittedly, just one element of a report led by the urban thinktank Create Streets. But it does argue that rather than multimillion-pound revamps, a better answer could be smaller changes aimed at making town and city centres more appealing.

Central to this, the study says, is trying to banish, or at least tame, motor traffic, because too often urban centres are places “designed to be driven through, not for time to be spent in”.

As well as citing a lack of imagination, the report blames planning regulations that favour conformity and clutter and too often treat speeding cars as a given, around which everything else must adjust.

“The default high street is engineered for traffic and furnished from a catalogue: a tarmac pavement, guardrails penning people at the kerb, litter bins ordered from a procurement catalogue, a row of plastic planters – public investment that is joyless,” it says.

While planners have traditionally focused on car access as a metric for thriving town centres, calculations for the report suggest that replacing parking with other kerbside infrastructure, including bike spaces or outside drinking and dining, creates more economic value.

It found that one parking space in the high street of a market town is typically used by about 3.5 vehicles a day, bringing in just over £73,000 a year in spending to nearby shops. But the same 12 square metres, if used to hold nine share e-bikes, generates an average of 13 trips a day, with over £146,000 a year in spending, even taking into account the lower average spend per person.

In a busier city, where share bikes would be used more frequently, the estimated total annual spend rises to more than £300,000.

Repurposing the space for outside dining brings less dramatic gains, but in a city centre it can still amount to about £120,000 in extra spending.

The report, also produced by Cyclehoop, which makes bike storage, calls for a cultural rethink involving low-cost tweaks that rip away ugly and unnecessary street furniture and make better use of kerbsides.

Calling use by families “the indicator species of a healthy high street”, the report cites what is known as “the wrist test” – whether it feels safe to let go of a young child’s wrist so they can roam with some freedom.

This is best done, it argues, by removing the threat of speeding motor vehicles and not by trying to mitigate their impact. It calls the removal of pedestrian guardrails next to roads “the most cost-effective upgrade for the majority of high streets”, saying they are an eyesore with minimal safety benefits.

The report says “the absurdity of modern public realm management” is exemplified by Secured by Design, policy guidelines on cutting neighbourhood crime. These can, critics point out, mean benches and plants are removed on the advice of police, supposedly to discourage antisocial behaviour.

Andy Burnham, the prime minister, has pledged to try to reverse the decline of high streets, announcing in September a £210m regeneration fund.

However, the bulk of the money will go into buildings: turning old shops into shared workspaces or community cafes, or keeping pubs and clubs in business.

The report argues that renovating buildings is pointless if the street outside is unappealing. To reduce clutter, it says, there should be “a presumption of removal where an item cannot be justified”.

The effects can be dramatic, the report says, pointing to examples including Altrincham in Cheshire, where the creation of a walkable, car-free urban area helped see retail vacancies fall from over 30% to 7% in less than a decade.

Such initiatives do not have to be expensive, it claims, noting the example of an unused patch of land next to a church in Grimsby which was turned into a park for less than £20,000.

“Streets that are ugly are not so because councils lack the desire to change them, but because the system is counting the maintenance liabilities, not the benefits,” says David Milner of Create Streets.

“What works is cheap: trees in the ground, benches people want to sit on, clutter taken away. So much of what is built now seems to be temporary, looking more like road works than public realm improvements, so we encourage the concept of permanence; more trees in the ground, not in giant plant pots, for example.”