Shame and it won't get any better with the so called 15min city's and the killing off of cars etc, sad indeed

Turn high streets into community hubs. Cafes, pubs, centers for classes, workshops - carpentry, crafts, pottery etc. things that you can’t do online and involve people socializing and meeting others. But I imagine the rates charged for shops etc is too high and so this kind of idea wouldn’t be affordable, given the rip-off rates charged by landlords

As an outsider it's fascinating to see the stark contrast to here. I'm also in a seaside town, but a Norwegian one - Haugesund. Between Bergen and Stavanger. it's not a holiday town though, never been - always been a port for fishing, logistics, the oil industry etc. Our high street Haraldsgaten is a quite lively place, with shops, clothes shops, cafes, restaurants, cute old shops for traditional handcraft, etc.

There's also parks and green spaces where I live, full of litter, rubbish, overflowing dog poo bins and abandoned shopping trolleys. It really is depressing at times.

1. Ask the tories for public dosh back. 2. Install an elected PM and not this secondhand miniature one. 3. Never vote tory again Follow these steps to save the country.

There is a fella called the a wondering Turnip who was one of if not the first to document the death of the high street. He does not have an agenda but allows the viewer to see how the high street, jobs, local economy has crumbled. We all come to our own conclusion that funding for services and to councils has been massively reduced and in the comments it always goes back to the elephant in the room…The Facist Tories and 14 years of decline with a huge dollop of brexit. So much for the so called levelling up of the North which was promised if as Bodger and that lizard Cuntings Put it “Get Brexit Done”

When I arrived back in UK 9 years ago I could see that UK is heading towards a police state; I am shocked at what has happened to this country since the 90's

I live in Southport, it has a beautiful high street called Lord Street, it was falling into disrepair but a few local business men have invested heavily and rescued a lot of buildings. I didn't know what we would have done without them.

Major issue with UK travel is the travel itself, either spend half the weekend in traffic or get a train that costs more one way than a return flight to Malaga !!

It’s not just seaside towns,where I live in Derbyshire,Alfreton it’s a disgrace,there’s a nail bar,about four hairdressers,bookies,vape shops and goodness knows how many takeaways.In the last few months Shoezone,WH Smith’s and they are talking about Boots closing now.And to be honest Derby apart from one shopping precinct is lots of boarded up shops.

A little town near me not far from Bradford called Saltaire, cafes are thriving, street veg boxes are everywhere and allotments. The park always has festivals and there is a train station. Its a thriving community area with a wonderful mill conversion art gallery featuring David Hockney... honestly it's just so refreshing.

Yes, there's been no investment but somehow we've accumulated a £2.7 Trillion debt! Discuss!

It’s a silent depression we are in, think people are starting to realise we have been in it for quite a while.

Free rates for start up business' so they can get a foot on the ladder is the only way they can compete with those big ones that don't pay any tax. Eh Amazon?

Some reasons contributing to the decline of the high street are sky high rents and rates for the properties and sky high parking charges. Reduce the cost of having a business and of visiting the business will go a long way to stopping the rot.

If people have more money, they spend more money, if they spend more money this creates more employment which creates more money... Round and Round

Car dependent design of urban environments and the internet favours big corporations. Building large stores surrounded by parking or warehouses to accommodate home delivery or the convenience of driving to one place for everything is what is killing high streets, especially as walking around in places with so many busy roads everywhere is nothing more than a chore. You need to build places where people want to go, not places they will avoid unless they are forced to drive through them, when everyone drives to a supermarket or retail park or just orders stuff on Amazon, high streets die and only places that can compete - bookies, vape shops, off-licences and takeaways are often the only things left that compete with the home delivery or the supermarket. That is not only killing high streets, but strangling towns and cities economically, everyone wants to either hide at home because our cities aren't nice places to spend time, or they want to go somewhere else. The times where you'd have a nice lively town with people walking around are gone, we now just have a dystopian nightmare where going anywhere is too much of a pain in the arse, so you try to spend as little time shopping as p[possible or do it from home.

You are doing a marvellous job and service to your country by exposing the depth of poverty and where money should be spent

Used to use our town center shops but they screwed us with parking charges and an army of traffic wardens so we switched to shops with free parking and moved away.... No one at council would listen about parking charges so we ended up with dead town center

I miss the old high street. Before the internet was in its prime and we all went outside to go into the shops to get our goods. The high street was so lively back then but unfortunately all the points you have made in this video are true. I also think that the massive retail areas around towns have further contributed to high street decline because now people don’t have to go into town when they have to go outside to get shopping. The decline of the high street is really sad. I am a bit lucky to live near Kings Lynn in Norfolk as although it does have vape shops, gambling places and boarded up shops, it still has a lot of good places like the Poco Lounge, the Filling Station, Waterstones, the RSPCA charity book shop which has so many interesting books, CEX for video game lovers, Crafty Army Norfolk and finally the silver spoon cafe. However, I do miss the old shops that the UK doesn’t have anymore like Woolworths, C&A, BHS, Debenhams and now Wilko too. Argos is also basically dead as now it just operates in Sainsbury’s. I wish the high street would just go back to how it used to be but unfortunately that is pretty much impossible.

High rents business rates, car parking charges, LTNs, double yellow lines and internet shopping are contributing to the downfall of the high street.

There's this fascinating 'mirror image ' of Victorian seaside towns ' in the Netherlands. They have very similar architecture ,sqme layout ,etc ( same climate !;) But they are relatively small (compared to the U.K) and more attached to main cities .They are very well maintained . They keep being renovated and are still 'the place to be'. The moment the sun appears, Dutch (& Germans) flood them. Now obviously England is far bigger and has a bigger population. But still, I remember visiting Brighton (I think ?) and saw how incredibly huge it was .And then I saw how many of these huge beach places there are . Also a lot of these English sea side towns are not directly connected to main cities. It's not like in the Netherlands, where the two biggest coastal areas are a 15 minute tram/car drive from The Hague center , or half an hour train/car from Amsterdam. The ones I've seen in England felt just far too big and there are just too many of them .They were build in another time for another kind of tourists. So maybe safe a few and invest in re-building them ?

please don’t give up on shops, we want to see a person when we shop, need to make an exchange; don’t give in to digital, it’s horrific how addicted everyone is to their phones. It’s maddening being out with a friend and they keep looking at their phones or answering calls, that aren’t emergencies. I agree that communities destroyed since Thatcher, are wonderful ways of developing independence, good relationships and cocking a snoot at the two useless, main parties.

I think you are correct when you say these towns need to radically change but I also think Britain needs to get out of this extreme focus on its past and seeking to restore things to a past state. In fact I would go so far as to say that the extreme focus on the past is what causes these issues, the lack of a vision for a future that could be different from anything that has been there before. I also believe tourism is a secondary concern. Why should anyone want to visit places where people don't even want to live? Make the places great for the locals and tourists will likely follow automatically. This doesn't have to be super-expensive investment either, though some investment is needed but tearing down all those boarded up buildings would be a good start and maybe making those towns greener, more pedestrian- and bike-friendly, make the centre of the town something for humans to meet and hang out, eat and enjoy entertainment, not a street for cars. Opportunities are also not really something that people from the outside will just offer to the people living in these towns, opportunities are things they need to make for themselves and to help them with that better education is absolutely crucial as well as better infrastructure, both inside those towns and also to connect them to the rest of the country. The latter would also help with tourism, nobody wants to travel to a place that is hard to reach.

Most problem's is people don't have money to spend,In over priced Britian. Its the gap between rich and poor is the main problem, I spent £1000 for 4 night at a uk hotel, B&B , For £2500 i got 2 weeks in gran cannaira hotel all exclusive,Flights and transfers. They spend money on there tourist spots, clean nice beaches, no rubbish laying around,walkways keeped in tip top condition,roads no potholes, Allways good weather, Busses are so cheep.like in cypruss flat fares. Trains here cost like £15 for 2 stops,total rip off. this is what you get for privertising everything,( Money stuffing the rich pockets) and many never paying full taxs. back to to treasury. UK is one big Sh-t show

You hit the nail on the head about lack of investment, when you mentioned Covid. How much money did we waste on that, with lockdowns, furlough, buying poisonous 'vaccines' etc. Just imagine if all that wasted money could have been spent on improving run down areas.

I can't see the High Street ever recovering. With Internet shopping being so much easier, far cheaper, and with a larger range of choices. not to forget the OTT bills such as rents, energy, business rates, and insurance that make running a retail outlet too costly for many folks and companies. The days of popping down the road to get something like a new TV or shoes or a bit of furniture are destined to be a nothing more than a memory of a bygone age!!! Back in 2012, I needed a new hard drive and connectors. So I went down to the shops to see what they had. The hard drive was £120ish and the connectors were about £40. I then checked online and found them both for £120!!! Which saved me enough money to buy of a decent length of good quality speaker cable for my stereo!!! My camera is another good example, because on the High Street in 2018, I would have paid £1100 (brand new but opened), but ended up getting it online and I only payed £660 (brand new and unopened)!!!

Just been to Blackpool last week after loooonnng time. I was shocked by its state . Its crumbling away. Shocking .

Well, the weather in the UK is not the best

I'm italian. In the early 90s I took 2 study holidays in England. The first was in Crawley the second in Plymouth. I stayed with an English family and went to college during the day. Weekends took us to visit coastal towns. I know that after Brexit, study holidays are taken in Ireland.

Managed decline. Badly managed at that

Why do I go to an out of town Sainsburys or Tescos and not the high street?: Easy: free parking, trolley to get stuff to the car, crime free, and weather proof shopping. If you want to save a high street, just implement those four things and we will use them. But towns are greedy and want to charge you £3 to park, they harass you with traffic wardens, there are no trolleys, no policing and they are not weather proof. Calling for government investment is all very well, but we know it would be wasted or stolen money. Governments can enable, but they are truly lousy at investment. And the government does not invest in the big out of town supermarkets, and yet they are successful.

Although the weather is lousy, Worthing seafront looks very pretty. I can imagine however that flats there are astronomically priced.

Worthing 'survives' (if you can call it that) because it has the highest elderly per capita in the country which creates a cycle of high home sell offs as elderly go into care homes and wealthy families (due to these homes being larger) moving into the area, notably due to its proximity to Brighton. Worthing's high street isn't dead but that's because it's shops for toys for the younger generation or tat furniture, hearing aids and mobility scooters. Crucially, Worthing isn't the exception to the rule, it's the cause of the rule in other places. It also helps that the Worthing/Lancing A27 was voted worst road in the UK so leaving is pretty impossible too...

Bring community hubs to the high street - workshops to get into trades, classes, spots for socialising etc. But the first one is the big one, it could potentially opens routes for many people.

I had 2 holidays last year, one in a holiday park & one in a little town in spain. The difference was massive. In spain there were many, well maintained play areas, stages with live music, cafés & restaurants. As a result the evening were buzzing. Not just with tourists, with locals and at thw weekend, day trippers. In the UK, the cafes shut at 5 and there was rubbish everywhere in local spaces. Austerity and wage stagnation has killed the local town. I am a middle income income earner and even so our local town is shocking. My wife went to pick up our eldest last night at 7pm and saw youths running around with knives, we saw a guy openly shooting up on a Saturday AM. Invest, get more police making these palces feel safer, more cleaners to keep them clean. Encourage local businesses with better business rates and rent.. Its goung to take years, to change people's mindset but we had 15 years of a government actively killing infrastructure.

The high streets seem to be ok in the rest of Europe, so I don't think we can blame the internet for the state of ours. I suspect that the decline in real terms wages and a lack of disposable income has a lot to do with it. People need to be paid properly for a thriving high street.

tax amazon would be a start

To save the high street, we need to tackle the problem of cost. Most of what I get on the high street can be bought online for cheaper and I can do my online shopping without leaving my home or getting dressed. I live in Sompting and the high street in Lancing is rather pitiful so I tend to walk (about 45 minutes or 15 if I take the bus) into Worthing. One of the things I love about Worthing is the pedestrianisation of the high street and the fact it is spread out amongst several streets.

All we can do as a citizen is send this utubers videos to every MP in Parliament.

I stayed in Scarborough's Grand Hotel back in the 70's.. it was Grand. Their beach is nice, the castles great and the North Yorkshire Moors Nationaal Park is beautiful. Come and visit 😊 I'm originally from North Yorks before emigrating all the way to NL, but I holiday in the UK twice a year combined with visiting family.. so I'm doing my bit in supporting what increasingly looks like our dodgy poorer neighbour, this time we're stopping off for a few days in the Woking area if anyone has a top tip.

Where I live, if you do take on a local shop ,rest assured , you will be getting a visit from the local security specialists.

i am not sure if it will save the high street but it would be nice if Amazon paid its taxes for starters..Austria has high streets, busy shopping centers and people have spare money.Oh thats right they are in the heart of the EU.Ok smaller towns in Austria have shopping streets that need investment but Vienna is doing well almost all over the city and its growing.I went to Crroydon in the south east of London and it was almost a ghost town.The heart of it was practically empty and Allders a massive building right in the heart of Croydon has been standing empty for years maybe decades.Croydon was a busy thriving shopping destination once and everyone ,even me had money.Croydon is not unusual though .This is a thing all over the UK.

It's a systemic problem and it affects, well, everything I guess. Politically (in the UK anyway) the problem is that just fixing one thing will hardly make a noticeable difference and we don;t even want to spend the money on that. I'm in Cleethorpes and we actually do still get day trippers quite a lot - the railway station is next to the beach but the train company involved is Trans Pennine so trains are unreliable. Parking isn't bad, but it's expensive - a park and ride from Grimsby would help; you could use parking areas to create more activities but huge parts of the seafront derelict - an old theme park just rotting there. There's always talk of development but nothing ever seems to actually happen. And I don't know where to start with the effect raw sewerage is having. In the end the thing you need to fix first is everything, we've broken so much. Just fixing transport or just fixing health or just fixing pollution or just fixing the rental sector etc. won't cut it but our political system pretty much demands that the electorate can see improvement over a 4 year parliament or the other lot get back in. Because we don't seem to have a party that will stand up the the neo-liberalism that (I believe) is at the root of it all, that nothing is done unless a profit can be made, and if the profit can be made by not even doing it then all the better, we're kinda stuck. I've said it here before - little acts of people power local at least make you feel better and improve things locally; clean the beach, work in a community garden, support local arts initiatives, maybe join an activist group. It's not going to fix much, but you can enjoy an afternoon feeling smug in the company of others 😉

Thanks ,your updates are excellent, 100%spot on, it's all in dire state, thanks to toxic Conservative gov, 14 years of Austerty & decline, whilst the gap between the Wealthy & everybody else grows wider,every year.& the Uks Debt reaches record high.

Don't forget the charity shops. There are 5 in my little town, and I'm getting jaded with them

Another problem hardly anyone talks about is. Everyone works 9-5 all while shops and businesses are open 9-5. So everyone who has a job will literally never get a chance to do business on the high street. Garages and trades are guilty of this as well, making people take time out of their jobs just to get things done.

I had the misfortune to live in Worthing for a couple of years when I was a teenager in the mid-1970s. Anyone who has spent a dull wet sunday in the town will understand why people do drugs.

Commercial rates and parking charges through the roof. Check Hastings; a large hotel and seaside restaurant closed last month. As to local shops - use it or lose it.

Great video, not sure about some of the commentary. Key points about commercial rates and online selling are spot-on. The problem with rates is that the councils are largely so financially inept that if they reduce them they really won't have a clue on what to do about the shortfall. There was a recent BBC article where the council leader and councillors did not seem to have a particular professional grasp of what their problems were. I lived in Worthing for a number of years, so it was a pleasant reminisce and, yes, there are some empty high street stores (particularly the big brands like Debenhams, but because of their size, they tend to dominate conversations and distort perceptions) but on the whole, it has transformed itself from a “seaside resort” to a “town that is on the coast”. I now live about 10 miles to the west, in Littlehampton - less noticeable decline because the high street shops are smaller, but we now get empty units replaced by (in order of proliferation): 1. women's hairdressers (we must be prosperous because we can support 3 or 4 hairdressers in about 400 metres, with 2 of them side by side) 2. bookies 3. vape shops - the scourge of modern life 4. Nail bars 5. barber shops - keep appearing! The traditional high street brands such as Boots and W H Smiths (and almost every bank) have decided that enough is enough and have deserted. The TUI travel agent, gave up the ghost and it is now a nail bar. Even the charity and second-hand shops are closing down. Back to one of the points, blaming the government for everything, is an easy cop-out (I am a committed socialist for the past 60 years so I have no love of the Tories and was in Wakefield during the miners' strike) but how can you defend councils that are bankrupt or close to that situation, who are spending millions of pounds on renovating their own offices/town halls? My view, which will no doubt antagonise the vast majority of the people who view your videos, is that the ultimate responsibility lies with the voting public; 1. Who voted for Brexit, which is now seen as the root of many evils? 2. Who votes for councillors, without talking to them, listening to them, challenging them on how they are going to provide a fair service for their community, within budget? 3. Who votes for an MP without knowing what they are prepared to do to champion the causes of their constituency (or even turn up on a regular basis), or is it just based on the colour of their rosette? My reaction is pretty negative about life in the UK today, but where are the businesses offering apprenticeships, where are the college courses aimed at practical training which could go a long way to improving national productivity - instead we can have a degree course in Harry Potter or a hands-on course in sponge stencilling; now those really make the rest of the commercial world sit up and quake about the potential rise from the ashes of the UK economy. We need joined up thinking about all aspects of society - education, social services, healthcare, transport, productivity, IT, social media etc. and that is not going to happen whilst we have such a divided political system where co-operation across “parties” is actively discouraged, and you have a bunch of non-elected individuals (the Lords) who mostly only turn up to get their daily fee, and can approve or block anything based on whether or not they have a dinner date that day. And, by the way, regardless of the comments of one of your responders, Worthing has the absolute best charity shop (Heart Foundation) I have ever come across - quality furniture that beats any of the mainstream providers, at a fraction of the cost. Finally, why do local councils not have the power to set the rent for private rentals, based on property size, facilities etc. related to their own social housing stocks - it might be a short-term solution fo lack of rental properties in tourist hotspots - and then, if the owner decides that they want out of the rental market, the council caps the sale price of an ex-rental property. As a country, the people who are supposed to be championing our interests do not have any collective balls.

We have a number of closed shops in Colchester due to all the reasons you mention. The local council is trying to help by revamping a couple of central squares with levelling up money. Plus a couple of old empty shop units have been covered into a community bike repair shop and a secure bike storage place which you access via an app. Both of these seem to work well.

I love going to our local sea sides like Weston super mare, Minehead and Burnham on sea

I think there are many issues involved, it is not a simple problem to solve. I do see some problems which revolve around car dependence though. People have become so used to driving to supermarkets and big out of town shopping places where they can easily park. This is not the case in most town centres where it is difficult to do so, so people do not do it. The same goes for pubs as people can't drive to the pub and drink alcohol, they don't, and there is such poor public transport that there is no alternative - and they certainly can't walk !!! As for internet shopping (I am in my 70's but use the internet routinely to shop) there has been a drift away from High Street shopping since the 1970's on the back of driving to the cities 40/50 or so miles from us (in the Scottish Borders to Carlisle, Newcastle, and Edinburgh) rather than our town centre. It is, sadly, difficult to critiscise this though as the choice is so much better in those cities, and people also see it as a day out. The internet is just an extension of this better, and easier, choice. As for 15 minute cities, I can walk from one end of our town to the other in 15 minutes, so it is not really relevent. There is more to it, though. As decent employment has disappeared lower wages have restricted peoples buying power. I really think that low wages are the biggest problem the country has. As I say that though, I do struggle to understand why I see more and more bigger and more expensive "luxury" cars on our roads and choking our streets. As for what to do about run-down town centres, what I would like to see is more housing created from them. This requires investment though and this now seems to depend on the private sector (as it seems that public money can not be spent any more) and they only invest where they can make money and probably prefer to go to the big cities. I've been down to London and Manchester in recent years and never cease to be amazed at the number of cranes supporting house and office building there. Like yourself I actually care about all these problems but, as you can probably see, I struggle to see a way forward. Much as I want rid of the Tories, I do not here anything from any of the other parties about how to solve these issues. Anyway, thanks again for an excellent video. You are right on the ball with your observations.

I can't speak for all towns but mine is pretty small and the reason I and many avoid the high street/ town centre is the lack of parking. Warden's always out to get you, one hour isn't enough if you have things to do. Even driving up to get a hair cut if the place Is busy, you've no hope to get in and out in time. Paid parking is extortionate I refuse to pay it. So people who drive go to the retail parks with tons shops and abundant free parking.

When I saw your poll last night, it was quite hard for me to think of which option would be my ideal pick, as it would really depend on the surroundings. However, I can share with you that as a former resident of Bradford (which is landlocked) a lot of buildings are extremely run-down and boarded up, but the "Bradford by the sea" towns of Blackpool and Morecambe have been in that sort of state for some time and parts have improved in recent years. Speaking of addiction buildings, there's plenty of those but unfortunately a lot of takeaway and fast food places which is a massive drawback. But I certainly do agree that more investment needs to go into making these places more hospitable and productive!

Wandering Turnip, Joe Fish and By the Curb all good to see what's going on...

Reminds me of the former GDR in the year 1990!

In Sheffield there's at least five community food halls I can think of and they are replacing part of the market in my town of Rotherham with something similar plus a new entertainment area with an Arc Cinema, hotel and local food retailers called Forge Island. There are no major chain stores left in the town centre only Tesco, B&M, Home Bargains, the vape shops, nail bars, turkish barbers, and eastern food shops. The only nice bit is the historic High Street at the back of the historic minster which has some excellent independent shops but not enough to attract people to the town. Oh and the new football stadium is near the town centre which also helps. Everything else has moved to Meadowhall or Parkgate Retail Park in the last 25 years. In its heyday Rotherham had a C&A... Unfortunately councils have their hands tied behind their backs with government set business rates. Any subsidy has to come out of local funding.

The market place has moved on-line. There has to be a total re-think on rent and rates for the on-line and off-line market places with incentive to create community/art spaces.

It's the same over here. Only way to fix it is to lower the prices for rents for shops and raise rhe salaries for people. It's the same here in Germany as well in parts. Only crap shops left if any at all. Many closed forever.

Shop rents and easy in and out leases are a way forward if flats are granted above the empty shops then low rents for the remaining unit's?

Glad you mentioned my home town of Worthing. Lived here all life of 55 years it's an utter dump compared to what it used. There's only one independent clothes shop for men. I urge you to take a look at the guildbourne centre to see what it's become. How much has online shopping got to do the demise if the high plus the parking charges on top of that 14 years of the Tories hasn't helped with all the cut backs to council funding

I noticed what you say about British High Streets ages ago, when my daughter moved house and I was looking at the small town (not seaside) she moved to, so I looked at the towns I have lived in before I emigrated away from there in 2001. Betfred, Indian owned convenience stores, vape shops, a lack of larger stores, zero variety and closed down shop fronts all seem to be what the town centers are all about these days. Note, while I am sure the Indian owned small stores are essential for some places, they are a symptom of a lack of EVERYTHING needed and now missing in the small towns.

Worthing's my hometown! I'm glad that you're somewhat local to me!

Wonderful video and talk!

Around me the high street seems to have mostly turned into escape rooms restaurants and cafes. A few shops are still holding on but not in the shopping centre. But it’s way better than when I travel further afield and everything is closed or as described here.

Weather is one of the many major factors facing your country. It's awful, gray and depressing. Unfortunately it's the one thing you cannot change too

Going back to first principles, towns evolved as safe gathering places that were lived in. Shops and trade followed. No-one lives in town centres so they have lost their meaning. Only when people start living in town centres will trade return.

"Turd towns" is a fun watch. Shop local is easy to say, but the government needed to act early, rates for shops stayed high and parking charges came in, while out of town shopping have the "day out" for the whole family. It's all now undercut by on-line sellers, low costs due to exploitation you even get free shipping from china 🤦🏻‍♂️ffs

Back in the 80's Saturdays were the day you'd go to town. You'd walk around the town center and it would be heaving. Go into WHsmiths and look at the games and magazines, Woolworths for the pick and mix, maybe a record. How times change.

Town centres exist on a model that's 20 years out of date, charging high rents/rates for shops and appartments, high parking charges, and still allowing out of town retail parks, and allowing shopping malls that suck the life out of the rest of the town. There are still shops that work better as physical shops. Clothes shopping is pretty awful online, or anything where you want to browse the goods because you don't know exactly what you want. Town centres need to be more compact, have more people live there, and be affordable.

We could tax Amazon and the likes to help fund town centre regeneration. So many retailers have gone from our town centres, accelerating town-centre decline. 'Centres of creativity' as mentioned by others who have commented.

I used to prefer the Beach hotel to the Chatsworth before it was closed down, but spent many weeks in both of them before I retired. I used to love staying there during the week but Worthing looks a shadow of itself from 10 years ago.

Coastal towns thrived on their fishing industries, which of course no longer exist. The tourist industry was the fall back, which of course is seasonal and it's a general downward spiral from there. I don't know how you change it unless you move big industry into coastal places. But you can't just throw money at dying towns. They have to be able to survive on their own at some point.

I live in Hartlepool in the North East and it's simultaneously the most beautiful and depressing place to live. The actual high street (Church Street) is full of boarded up shops, prostitutes, and general vandalism damage. The sort of "replacement" high street is the typical repetition of cafe, takeaway, vape shop, bookies, off licence and theres also a library that's hanging on for dear life. Not to mention the slightly absurd amount of bus stops,meaning the pavement is always blocked. This town used to rely on tourism, mostly to the two naval museums but it seems most people aren't interested in that sort if thing anymore so one of them (Heugh Battery up at the Headland) is not far from closing down and the other one, housing the 2nd oldest ship still afloat, isn't fairing much better. Neighbouring Seaton Carew is suffering as well since at least half of the shops on the seafront are out of business. Its quite a miserable place to live honestly, burnt out husks of buildings, smashed in windows, boarded up shops, drugs and alcohol everywhere thanks to the lack of coppers, its basically been left to fend for itself by this traitorous government.

2:27 Going abroad for Medical Treatment; Private Health because the NHS is (naughty word)

Unfortunately... I don't think we can VM.

What about practical activities, custom craft work, repairs... Laser tag, indoor sports and games centers ect. Why does it need to be retail shop or nothing but a few of these addition outlets?

Main problem is business rates.. This is similar to council taxes but for shops etc. Some smaller places are exempt whereas even a slightly larger shop will attract tens of thousands in business rates.

The one thing that boils my pee and you nearly touched on it is how holidays crank up the prices in school holidays, I bring this up all the time at my brothers bbq's, families who are already struggling have to pay upto and exceeding £1000 more for a school holiday break is insane, you want to boost UK holiday industry, there's your solution and that would seriously hit the foreign holidays, if these places want to capitalise on school holidays put up the prices of beer, food and toys, don't take the pee just take a tiny advantage, the amount of folk who start coming will balance the books

Brilliant thank you for publishing. Absolutely right. This started with Thatcher. The criminal economics behaviour over North sea oil and gas. Look at Norway (it kept control) with the biggest sovereign fund in the world. Funding health care, social projects and infrastructure, early retirement, and re investment. (Some of which is foreign investment) That is what a real Government does looking forward to the future. We need to look at all solutions in this complex issue and be brave to take radical steps. Not put up with big businesses or the media interference. Greetings from Bridlington. 😊

I mean you mostly nailed it, investment is key. But also I'd say you need tighter planning control on what businesses can be built. High streets started to die when supermarkets were allowed to come into the city centres and replace them. The local butcher or grocer can't compete with a Lidl on pricing, even if their stuff is better. The same for big chains being allowed too many freedoms, I lived in an area with a historic, unchanged late Victorian, early Edwardian town centre, but while living there I saw the original frontages with their plaster decorations and old fashioned small window panes being torn down and being replaced by identical blank plastic box fronts. All the unique character of the high street left, and soon after all the independents did too, because you just can't compete with businesses like Costa who can afford to run on tighter margins to squeeze you out.

So heartbreaking 💔😢

I know it sounds crazy and I’d love to hear peoples opposing views on it but I think the UK’s high street and city centres would benefit from legalising cannabis (it’s already available to buy in the UK from a private medicinal clinic for things like depression, anxiety, insomnia etc). I don’t get why we can’t have cannabis cafes, cannabis restaurants, cannabis-friendly crazy golf, cannabis-friendly bowling, cannabis-friendly arcades. They have bars inside of hotels, so why not add cannabis flowers to the menu along with edibles, and concentrates, pre rolls, and even cannabis-infused drinks. Same thing with music venues, make them cannabis friendly or allow venues to obtain licenses to sell cannabis to make more profit. High street stores would open again, the slowly decaying music industry in the UK could be saved, new restaurants, new experiences, less angry alcoholics getting into fights and more people laughing, smiling and looking to order some food while stoned.

Everyone doing online shopping...I rarely use it...high streets in London now full with mafia cafes and barbers...vape shops...one drug mafia behind the lot..

Sorry to tell you, but the highstreet has been slowly dying since the 1980's, because of supermarkets and box stores, like at 10:15. They moved the shops from the town centre, to just out of town. So blaming people, because they starting to shop online, and saying that is killing the high street is wrong. The online shopping is just taking people away from the out of town stores. There is a way to save the high street, but it costs money. You just have to look at the old towns/cities that have nearly banned all traffic (your nightmare), improved public transport to the town centre, or people are able to walk/bike there easly. Give the buildings character, make the foot paths bigger, with trees around the place, and nice cafes/coffee bars where people can go and sit at, in or outside, without breathing in exhaust fumes. In other words make it a place people want to go and stay, and not just get what they want and then get out. The problem is, it all costs money, it will upset drivers because of the war on cars. Boefore the voye on Brexit, I saw a TV program, which followed a couple in north east London, as they went up the local high street. They were syprised by the number of shops that were run by eastern Europeans, and were blaming them for there being no butchers, greengrocers, and a lot of other stuff that had been there 15 years ago. And how the eastern Europeans, must have forced them all out, they had missed it because they had been going to the supermarket for 15-20 years, and they missed the idea that every one else had done the same, and that butcher had not waited the 15-20 years for them to come back, and them to give their trade to the butcher. The thing is if you give people somewhere where they would want to go, and visit and stay for a while, and met up with friends. Then people will go there, they will also shop there. OK they may not do their weekly shop there, but something that could be bought on Amazon. A shop where you can get to know the person that runs the shop, some where that will employ some onelocal. To be fair I only really buy on Amazon, because there is not a local shop to buy it from.

You're asking the wrong question - the UK high street was doomed the minute e-commerce became mainstream, and as a result high streets globally are going over a state of transition as they struggle to find their identity. Over the next 20 years you're going to see less stores (hopefully) more living/green spaces as brown goods get delivered from warehouse hubs. It's the march of globalism mate, and I honestly have no problem with it - the problem I have is the free market capitalist path we appear to have chosen.

Good evening, another great drive. Watch Ken’ Loaches Old Oak, very insightful and depicting the erosion of towns and communities. Desolation and deprivation. Admittedly an added issue in the story, yet it is a reflection of decline and a complete lack of interest for communities.

Commercial rents, like housing, are far too high and people have very little chance of making a new business work because of it, just look how many fail within 12 months. I don't see towns and villages in Europe in the mess we have created here in the UK.

Good comment Van Man! My brother lives in Clacton. He's OK in his middle class neighbourhood but the town as a whole has gone into decline over the last 30 years. Crime has gone up in this once sleepy little town. Its getting hard to buy anything there now and you have to go to Colchester to get a decent range of stores. And of course it voted overwhelmingly for Brexit out of despair, though my bro voted remain! Brighton by contrast is rich because its effectively a satellite of London in the rich South East. Clacton needs huge investment but its the end of the line literally.

shops: we need to compete with the internet councils: we hear you, lets charge them a tenner to shop for 2 hours.... i live in Lincoln, our high street is mainly food and bars now. waste of time.

I did 6th form and uni in the UK. Became an adult in London. I miss it and this makes me sad

If I was going to be talking about the decline of seaside towns, I wouldn't be doing it in Worthing, a seaside town that was never as popular as Bognor or Littlehampton, so when the seaside holiday industry collapsed, it wasn't so badly affected. I've lived all over the south coast (including Brighton) and I've got to say it's a great place to raise a family.

It's fallen Country.. And still holds 4th largest economy in the world.. Hard to connect fallen and high economy.

Online shopping did it, I’m from Torquay everyone gives it shit but it’s honestly the most beautiful town centre well anything from harbour side if you go away from the harbour it gets worse but since the conservative council got in power last year allot of improvements are finally underway since the Lib Dem’s took over.

Mansfield Vape bar, Nail bar, Charity shop, Turkish barbers, Shop closed, Vape shop, Charity shop, Nail bar, Polish barbers, Shop closed, Need i go on?

My local high street, here's a list of 12 shops in a row, Turkish barbers, chicken take away, kebab shop, pound shop, Turkish Barbers, Greggs, William Hill, Kebab shop, nail bar, chicken take away, pizza. And the opposite side pretty much the same.

Online shopping has also become very big which is hampering actual retail outlets

To me it's common business sense of why money does not get used in the UK, because the business men, councilors, politicians use offshore accounts to avoid taxes in these the UK and other countries that's why, so when they do that, the accumulation of money in their bank accounts here or else where "has" to be laundred " into assets" in other countries to remove or move the money else where, and people like us plebs or mere mortals wonder why, exploitation and survival is running rife. As well as all these business men, councilors, politicians are all friends, buddies and partners what ever name you want to call it.

It's not just tourists that are needed, you need to convince locals to go back to their towns by offering them experiences that they can't get by sitting at home. I like the idea of live events.