Ugh, Bhs. I was there in the end days. Philip Greed would come every now and then. Our tills were held together by rubber bands, staff were using security pins to replace the broken arm ends, and Greed would look around, say "there's some dust in the corner, clear it up," and stroll on. He wouldn't even talk to the staff directly, according to my colleague. He would whisper to a manager and they'd say it.

Chappell came in once after we'd gone into administration, so he had nothing to do with the business anymore and all the managers flocked around him. I was like, why are you fawning over him, he helped wreck the business and he's not even your boss anymore.

That place deserved to die, yet it didn't even have to be that way. Having worked in retail for 15 years, it's obvious head offices have no freaking clue, but heaven forbid they pay attention to the frontline staff. They just chase pointless KPIs.

In many city centres, huge amounts of property are held by pension funds, "investment portfolios" and "property holding groups" etc.

In their heyday, some of these shop units would be rented out for £20,000 a year. However, they're no longer worth that.

If they are rented out for something like £4,000 a year (or lower), they would definitely be used - there's plenty of tiny businesses, out of place shops that want a better location etc.

Unfortunately, from the vampiric property holding company's perspective, if they rent the unit out at £4,000 a year, it's only a £4,000 a year "asset" in their "property holding portfolio".

If they keep the rent at £20,000 and nobody rents it, it's still "worth £20,000" theoretically as an asset - and this imaginary money can be borrowed against, invested etc - so they can turn imaginary money into more imaginary money, and we have derelict shops.

Some politicians are scared of taking this on, because if done quickly, the bubble of "imaginary rent asset value" may cause another financial crash, or collapse of pension funds.

Anyway, really these places need a "if it's left empty for 6 months" compulsory purchase order of the building for a very low price. There's plenty of small businesses, community projects etc that are desperate for spaces at reasonable prices.

Anyway, this doesn't cover every dead high street, but it's certainly a lot of them.

My ideas:

• Remove the numerous money laundering fronts
• accept the fact that lots of shopping is done online now, and there will be some decline in the number of stores to reflect this.
• This might lead to sites which used to be shops becoming houses, which has already happened when supermarkets and commuting hypermarket started to replace local grocery stores.
• introduce parcel lockers near/on the highstreet, to better facilitate the trend towards online shopping, while also reducing the occurrence of delivery vehicles in the neighbourhood.
• Have non for profit organisations, like charity shops, libraries, small (donation-funded) art galleries, or other third spaces
• Pocket parks encourage people to actually visit and be present in that neighbourhood rather than just drive through.
• ideally remove physical betting houses on highstreets, because it's a direct drain on people's disposable income, which would otherwise go towards local stores. Also, online gambling exists now.

Where I live (in Sheffield) actually ticks a lot of these boxes, and seems to be benefiting from it. I go to other parts of the city or the wider country and when they aren't doing these things they're visibly suffering

Tax Amazon in some way, and zoning laws to encourage walkable development

I don't want to encourage people to drive, but free parking would help. Or the first hour is free or something.