Is Mary finally making an impact on the high street? It might not get as much attention as her eye-catching ideas for pop-up shops, markets and crèches, but The Distressed Retail Property Taskforce, set up as a result of a Portas Review recommendation, is serious stuff.

The DRPT is an industry-wide initiative that will bring bodies including The British Council of Shopping Centres, the British Retail Consortium and the Property Bankers Forum together in an attempt to find ways to rejuvenate failing town centres.

One of the key criticisms of the Portas Review was that it consisted of lots of good - and some not so good - micro solutions but ignored the bigger problem of structural shift in the nation’s high streets. It was also slammed by many in the financial sector for ignoring landlords, without whose involvement solutions, however laudable, tend towards the pie in the sky.

But this project includes the landlords and money men - the likes of Lloyds TSB, RBS, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the Investment Property Forum are also part of the taskforce. They might not come up with quirky ideas like market days, but they will be inspired by cold, hard financial facts.

DRPT chairman Mark Williams already seems to have come to a few conclusions - that the principal competition for smaller towns comes from larger cities and out-of-town retail centres, the threat to high street retailers from the internet is huge, and that “we now probably have too many shops in poor property, and possibly in the wrong locations”, as he told the BBC.

Attacking the government for delaying over plans to review business rates is a good start. Williams reckons small towns are in effect subsidising places like Bond Street, and while it won’t act as a panacea, a change of rates could make a positive, practical difference.

Once its research is complete - in six months, it says - the DRPT will have the bare bones of a useful review in place, and the people and organisations to act on its data. Whether it will have the wherewithal to whittle down the “too many shops” without causing much upset - as well as fight off the looming threat of online and booming cities like Liverpool and Manchester - is another matter

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