Writing in this week's Bromsgrove Standard (August 28th), Bradley said:
“Our High Streets matter because they are both the core of most communities and they’re a barometer of the economic and social vitality of those communities.
But they’re changing. Retail habits have changed as online shopping became the norm and social habits have changed to.
We must think about why footfall in retail has declined. There’s the effect of online shopping, but we must also acknowledge the increasing costs that businesses face, including business rates, utility bills and rising labour costs. It’s a perfect storm.
An estimated 38 businesses close every day. When businesses close, there’re job losses, with an estimated 93,000 retail jobs lost in 2025 alone. In the hospitality sector, its reported that up to 5,000 jobs are being lost per month.
The Government must change course on the additional costs they’ve placed on small businesses across the country. They’re unquestionably killing employment and putting greater pressure on the long-term viability of those businesses.
They should implement the Conservative’s plan to scrap business rates for thousands of high street businesses to give our high street traders a boost.
We’ve also seen a hollowing out of our high streets and a different type of retail moving in, often with different problems.
Take some of the statistics that back up the evidence about the narrowing range of high street retail across the country. There are now believed to be at least 3,500 nail bars, 20,000 to 25,000 barber shops and 3,500 vape shops.
At the centre of a Venn diagram of regulatory and reporting blackspots, there’s a sweet spot where it is difficult to identify those who are responsible behind the building ownership or the so-called businesses appearing on our high streets.
Like many challenges in society the vitality of high streets is a complex one with responsibility sitting with many different stakeholders, including wider collective society itself.
Many of the challenges around high streets fall through the cracks of different agencies that are meant to have responsibility for whatever the particular issue is, so the state needs to be fundamentally rewired to tackle it.
The state must bring together the Home Office, local authorities, police forces and the Treasury to clamp down on money laundering for instance. The state must become much more muscular and aggressive in both identifying the signs of money laundering and stamping it out. This should include preventing business rates from being paid for in cash so that the origin of funds are always traceable.
The unquestionable effect of illegal migration and county lines sits at the centre of much of this and far too many of the relevant powers are weak or dispersed to authorities that do not have the will or ability to crack down on the problem.
Much greater focus on tackling these issues is needed from all arms of the state, national and local, including arm’s length bodies, law enforcement and investigation. For far too long, a fragmented approach has allowed the problem to grow it has swelled, not declined, in recent years.
There’s no silver bullet to fixing our high streets, but by taking a long-term view, re-establishing the basic principles that society collectively acts within, and doing fewer things well, we can reset the expectation of those who think our town centres are beyond salvage.”
