Why are high street shops struggling?

Why is the high street struggling?

Transcript

00:00There's no doubt that the internet has been something that we all use for literally everything

00:07that we buy. Holidays, even buying houses, buying cars. Of course the fact that we no

00:13longer go to the high street is obviously part of that phenomenon because of course

00:18it's convenient. We can do it literally anywhere we like, in our beds, sitting on the toilet

00:23if you so desire. But of course the big attraction is because of course the internet traders

00:29and of course many are sort of available and I can think of one in particular that is

00:33famous for selling books. Their prices are really, really competitive because they don't

00:37have the high street sort of premises. Indeed if I may actually refer to Amazon this week

00:42they announced they're closing their high street stores. That was supposed to be the future

00:46or it was a compromise and it's not worked for them. So clearly they're going to sort

00:50of stick to what they know which is internet retail. The fact is though internet sort of

00:55trading is here and it's here to stay. But of course what we've also got is a continuing

01:00cost of living crisis. There is no doubt that sort of people are sort of feeling poorer and

01:05obviously the political dimension to that and we're also being told and sort of pre-warned

01:10that we're probably going to have to pay more taxes in some way or other to fix the sort of

01:16problems that sort of the Exchequer or the Chancellor in particular has. Therefore I think people

01:21are reining in sort of the discretionary spending. The things that they don't need to sort of

01:25buy but of course they're sort of nice to have. So the fact is though high streets are really

01:31sort of struggling because people just don't want to spend in the same way they say they once did.

01:35The challenge for policy makers is whether new initiatives can genuinely reverse decline

01:42or whether closures will continue despite fresh promises of support. Faced with a high street

01:49crisis the government hopes new community powers can slow the closures. If local groups succeed in

01:55reclaiming empty buildings town centres could find fresh life. But with retail still under pressure

02:01and funding in doubt it is unclear whether this initiative can deliver the turnaround communities

02:08are looking for.

02:13And indeed we're going to really see the issues in the next couple of months leading up to Christmas

02:14which of course traditionally is the time that most high street stores do a lot of their trade

02:19in that sort of run up and indeed many more sort of high street traders I suspect will probably

02:24sort of find that they've not made enough in terms of what they've been selling to cover their costs.