Business rates relief is welcome, but high streets need a new culture

The Federation of Small Businesses’ call to raise the threshold for business rates from £12,000 a year to £25,000 would definitely help independent retailers thrive. Yet even as the system stands, it’s apparent certain shopping clusters prosper more than others, irrespective of prevailing economic circumstances and demographics.

Successful small shopkeepers capitalise on the fact that we humans are sociable beings. Often teaming up with like-minded traders and citizens, they create a feeling of dynamism and excitement that we crave.

Who doesn’t like walking past a traditional greengrocer display? Wouldn’t you be more likely to go into a butcher’s shop if he sends out his handsomest apprentice to offer you a free sample of home-made pork pie? The presence of a lively indie food truck benefits all shops in the vicinity. Such initiatives foster “let’s have a coffee, visit a few shops, people watch, then have lunch” thinking.

Some of the cleverest ideas to regenerate high streets are cultural. One Saturday recently I visited Lewes in Sussex. It was hopping, with shops and cafés benefiting from the footfall generated by no fewer than three ‘open doors’ type events that offered free entry to artist studios, historic buildings, and eco-homes, as well as guided walks and talks.

I arrived in town at 10.30am and left at 4.30pm. My expenditure alone must have been a significant fillip to the local economy.

In London, the Norwood Society’s eye-catching Blue Plaques Shops Trail shows the power of history in driving footfall and encouraging people to linger. Stroll along the Crystal Palace Triangle and you’ll see plaques that echo the familiar English Heritage ones displayed in shop windows – marking a significant past trade, trader, or some history of the building.

Crystal Palace, of course, has a popular Saturday food market, with all the mood-boosting life that the hulking, depressing nearby Sainsbury’s lacks. Markets and parades with busy ethnic shops that spill produce onto the pavement offer an antidote to the deadness of supermarkets and the solitary consumer addiction of online.

Yes, 250,000 small businesses should be removed from the rates system entirely, as the FSB suggests. But some other highly effective strategies for reviving high streets are already free.