Creating and maintaining retail markets in town centres could be made considerably easier following retail guru Mary Portas’ review of the high street.
Portas told FPJ that “cost-effective” measures are needed to make it easier for town centre managers to support markets.
Speaking after a packed meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Town Centres, Portas said she wanted to “bring the energy back into selling” and called for issues around parking charges and business rates to be addressed.
The self-styled “Queen of Shops” suggested parking rates for town centres could be transferred to out-of-town developments to drive footfall back to the high street.
The boss of Yellowdoor has toured the country looking for solutions, keen to create high street “destinations”.
The meeting at Westminster on Tuesday was attended by a plethora of local councillors and MPs as well as the National Association of British Market Authorities and the National Market Traders Federation.
Blackburn MP and former home secretary Jack Straw asked Portas to look to his constituency, where Primark is the anchor tenant for a new covered market which opened in July, as a best practice example.
Portas, whose High Street Review, is likely to be complete “by the end of November” is looking for best practice examples to hold up as well as “five or six models” to apply to different types of town.
She questioned giving favourable rate rebates to charity shops. “It may be worth looking at the number of charity shops there are and capping that, then we can look at what percentage of the centre can be given over to new businesses,” she said.
Portas claims Sainsbury’s CEO Justin King told her: “You make it easier for me to come back [to the high street] and I will look at it.”
NABMA policy director Krys Zasada said he was “encouraged” by Portas’ view.
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