The decline of UK High Streets

I’ve been wandering the high streets of England for years, and it’s breaking my heart to see them crumbling into “ghost towns”.

I’m in a town just outside Birmingham. It used to be a buzzing spot with butchers, bakeries, and a lot of shops where you’d bump into half the neighborhood on a Saturday.

It seems that most of the shops are now closed with no plans of re-opening.

The only businesses to survive are vape shops, barbers, and the occasional pound store and/or a pound bakery clinging on for dear life.

There’s loads of ‘to let’ shops in the area but the lease cost, utilities and business rates amounts make it impossible to survive.

Any ideas of what we could do to improve this? IMO councils should give tax breaks to small businesses even when they rent properties with value over the Small Business Rates Relief.