Rethinking our High Streets Could Heal Our Housing Crisis
- Jamila Robertson
- Jul 3
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 23
In her monthly City AM column, Jamila Robertson outlines how rethinking our high streets could heal our housing crisis.
Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of Labour’s landslide victory and their year-long opportunity to attain the growth they promised the electorate.
I have written extensively about the damage decisions made at the Autumn Budget have done: with growth halved by the OBR and downgraded by the OECD; thousands of jobs cut across multiple sectors; 1m more people on Universal Credit; unemployment up by 10 per cent; and a millionaire leaving the country every 45 minutes.
The reasons for this are well-rehearsed: government decisions to increase the national minimum wage, increase employer National Insurance Contributions, impose a bridling employment rights bill and paralyse farmers and family firms through the removal of IHT relief. But one tax change that has been perhaps overlooked is the decision to cut business rates relief from 75 per cent to 40 per cent just as retail and hospitality businesses are still adjusting to a post-pandemic shift in the way the public interact with high streets.
The Labour manifesto promised to “level the playing field between the high street and online giants, better incentivise investment, tackle empty properties and support entrepreneurship”. Sadly their policies have done the opposite. According to the latest report by the ONS, there were 93,000 fewer retail jobs in this year alone.
It seems we are a nation of shopkeepers no more.
So what can be done to stop hollowing out of our high streets? The simple solution is housing.
The Centre for Policy Studies’ latest report ‘How Many Homes Does the UK Need?’, suggests the UK now has a shortfall of more than 6.5m homes. Why not build them where demand is high and buildings lay abandoned: town centres.
A recent walk into a south-eastern town centre brought home the high street’s sad decline. To save the town’s blushes I won’t name and shame, but even on the best high streets we see empty units, candy stores, or as Robert Jenrick observed “weird barber shops” (not weird because of who they are run by, but because there is no demonstrable need for 5 in a row.)
What’s needed is a radical rethink of our high streets. For that I look to mixed-used development Battersea Power Station: a beacon of Conservative regenerative vision. The brainchild of then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the local Wandsworth Conservative council, it was funded entirely through private investment.
The Urban Land Institute defines mixed-use as providing three or more revenue-producing uses (such as retail, entertainment, office and residential, alongside civic or recreation). They claim it fosters integration, density, compatibility of land uses and a walkable community.
Unsurprisingly, it works. According to Battersea Power Station’s figures for 2024, they’ve delivered 2,000 new homes, 386 of which are affordable, 150 shops, bars and restaurants, 800,000 sq ft of office space, a rooftop hotel and had 30m visitors since opening.
Most notable are the opportunities it has provided for local people: 20,000 permanent jobs, 3,000 direct and indirect construction jobs, 625 construction jobs filled by local residents and 196 local apprenticeships.
The government’s plan for high streets largely amounts to the introduction of High Street Rental Auctions, where empty shops will be given back to the community.
Yet, if the high street itself is abandoned – and I have seen many cases of this firsthand – then giving an empty shop space to the local community is inconsequential.
This can’t be solved by tinkering around the edges.What’s needed is a radical reimagining of deserted landmarks and brownfield sites in town centres, transforming them into housing-first high streets which provide opportunities, jobs and homes for local people, not reallocating empty space on a deserted high street.
However, after the antics of this week, is there any wonder that the government’s end to ‘sticking plaster politics’ is as elusive as their capacity to deliver growth.
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