How to get the buzz back on Britain’s high streets | Letters
Readers respond to an article about the decline of town centres Sammy Gecsoyler’s report from Rotherham (‘It’s just vape shops, nail shops, charity shops’: can anything save the British high street?, 4 November) tells the story in its dates.
Key points
- Rotherham town centre is now 24% vacant, while retail park vacancy nationally sits at 4.8%.
- We have since gone one step further by making home delivery cheaper than retail parks.
- Parkgate opened in 1987 and MPs warned that it would disembowel towns and villages.
One out-of-town retail park in Britain in 1981; 385 by 1996.
Up to 3bn parcels a year now land on British doorsteps and not one of them passes through a town centre.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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