Thriving market towns and villages

Opportunities

Leisure and cultural experiences are an increasingly important reason to visit our market town centres and high streets – from personalised customer service, to events, concerts, and food & beverage consumption.

Community spaces and social interaction will continue to bring people to the high street and; in particular through the use of pop-ups and other community-led initiatives that can reduce empty units.

People want to see more mixed use on their high street, including health and leisure services; the use of co-location and shared units could help to facilitate this.

Challenges

The rural nature of Central Bedfordshire makes the use of private cars popular. This can create congestion and parking challenges in historic market town centres and mean that many have a difficult time accessing these centres.

Small local businesses such as high street independents can be particularly vulnerable to central government policy changes, such as business rate rises.

The changing nature of retail and the rise in online shopping is already causing significant disruption to high street land uses; helping Central Bedfordshire business to adapt will be a challenge.

Trends

The High Street

5,000 high street stores have closed during the past 12 months in the UK, that’s nearly 416 per month.

Empty shops

In July 2019 the proportion of all shops that are empty reached 0.3%, its highest level since January 2015.

Retail is changing

The online share of overall retail sales in the UK is currently 17.8%, risen from 1.6% in 2002. 10% of these sales are click and collect. According to the Centre for Retail Research, growth in online retailing is forecast o reach 30% by 2028.