The recent news of the closure of one of the last remaining food shops in the High Street (Johnson’s Fruiterers) confirms the unwelcome transformation that is taking place in many high streets throughout the UK. Market forces and the internet are closing shops everywhere.
Luckily we still have some excellent independent shops such as the greengrocer and butcher in Cinque Ports street and residents will no doubt ensure they thrive. But perhaps the time has come to consider what sort of High Street we want in the future and how can we make it happen.
Despite planning rules to restrict shops being converted to other uses, the outlying retail streets such as Landgate are already being lost to residential conversions. If this continues and the case for retaining shops is not strengthened the Rother planners will find it increasingly difficult to refuse applications to convert shops into residential or offices - even in the High Street.
Market forces have been at work everywhere – particularly in the rural parishes and many shops and pubs have been lost. The loss of these local services forces people into their cars, increases the dominance of supermarkets, and finally erodes the sense of community which makes living here so special for all of us.
It is not all doom and gloom – market forces have been successfully resisted and we have some really good examples locally. Our wonderful cinema, the Kino, and the adjoining community rooms owned by the parish church would have been demolished and replaced with a luxury residential development had not one or two locals – including Mike Eve – taken the bold step to intervene.
There are several local parishes where the village shop has been bought as a result of community action. The new owners have stopped the shops being converted to homes and by charging a reasonable rent the shops have continued to trade and provide invaluable services to their villages.
The world has changed since the market became king in the time of Margaret Thatcher. Even Conservatives are now planning state interventions to correct the excesses of market forces such as the proposed cap on energy prices. Whether we will see the re-nationalisations proposed by the Labour party is another matter, but it is clearly time for some community based interventions to stop the rot on our High Street.
Photo: Christopher Strangeways
