Rip Out the Clutter: Thinktank Says Cheap Street Fixes Could Revive UK High Streets

A single parking space on a market town's high street is used by about 3.5 vehicles a day. By the calculations of the urban thinktank Create Streets, those drivers bring in just over £73,000 a year in spending to nearby shops. Put nine share e-bikes in the same 12 square metres and the picture changes: an average of 13 trips a day and more than £146,000 a year, even allowing for the lower average spend per person.

That comparison sits at the center of a new report from Create Streets, co-produced with the bike storage company Cyclehoop. Its argument is that Britain's long effort to revive the high street has leaned too heavily on multimillion-pound revamps, when smaller and cheaper changes to how streets look and function could do more. Cost is only one strand of the case. The larger claim is that too many town and city centres are, in the report's words, designed to be driven through rather than spent time in.

The figures shift with the setting. In a busier city, where share bikes are used more often, the estimated annual spend from that same space rises above £300,000. Outdoor dining brings less dramatic gains, but in a city centre it could still add about £120,000 a year in spending.

The report blames a lack of imagination and planning regulations that favour conformity and clutter, and that too often treat speeding traffic as a fixed condition everything else must adjust to. It describes the default high street as engineered for traffic and furnished from a catalogue: tarmac pavements, guardrails penning pedestrians at the kerb, bins from a procurement list, rows of plastic planters. It calls this public investment that is joyless.

Its remedy is a cultural rethink built on low-cost tweaks: strip out ugly and unnecessary street furniture and make better use of kerbsides. It calls removing pedestrian guardrails beside roads the most cost-effective upgrade for most high streets, saying they are an eyesore with minimal safety benefit. It also singles out Secured by Design, the policy guidelines on neighbourhood crime, as an example of the absurdity of modern public realm management; critics say it can lead to benches and plants being removed on police advice to discourage antisocial behaviour. The report proposes a presumption of removal for any item that cannot be justified.

The report measures success partly through families, calling them the indicator species of a healthy high street. It cites the wrist test: whether it feels safe to let go of a young child's wrist so they can roam with some freedom. The best way to pass, it argues, is to remove the threat of speeding vehicles rather than try to mitigate their impact.

It points to evidence that change can be dramatic. In Altrincham, Cheshire, a walkable, car-free urban area helped bring retail vacancies down from over 30% to 7% in less than a decade. And it says such work need not be costly, noting that an unused patch of land beside a church in Grimsby was turned into a park for less than £20,000.

David Milner of Create Streets said ugly streets are not the result of councils lacking the desire to change them, but of a system that counts maintenance liabilities rather than benefits. What works, he said, is cheap: trees in the ground, benches people want to sit on, clutter removed. He criticised the temporary look of much new development, closer to roadworks than improvements, and urged permanence, such as trees planted in the ground rather than in giant pots.

The timing matters. Prime Minister Andy Burnham pledged to reverse high street decline and announced a £210m regeneration fund in September. Most of it is going into buildings: turning old shops into shared workspaces or community cafes, or keeping pubs and clubs open. The report argues that renovating buildings is pointless if the street outside is unappealing.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said the government supports local leaders in deciding on pedestrianisation according to community needs. They pointed to the Hope on the High Street strategy, which aims to protect community assets, bring derelict buildings back into use and tackle the spread of vape and gambling shops, and said funding is available for local priorities including pedestrianising high streets. Whether councils spend on street-level changes rather than buildings is the open question.