Popping up in PG this September

Love ideas 1 and 2 in particular. PG lacks any large squares or similar where we can have marketplaces, some of the large vacated retail units could be perfect.

Expanding on the pop-up posting and also ideas by Caley, depending on interest, it may be shops will look at additional pop-up days. Festival is, of course, a one-day-only hit; this year anyway.

Our local (rail car park) market had three huge launches with committed teams under residents Philip, Hannah and finally Anita. None proved sustainable despite their massive efforts. High street traders are now looking at the issue but there are several issues to resolve, not least where to locate it, when (Enfield’s Royal Charter is restrictive) and what to sell to who. The large voids have proved impossible to use for this.

As part of some long running background work, all PG traders have received requests this week for a snapshot of current conditions and also their five year view. Response rates have been very high. Under a LBE umbrella, the coordinating retail specialists will be reporting in a tight timescale.

Outside of this LBE driven work, but not unaligned with it, the majority of traders subsequently received a presentation pack highlighting issues, opportunities, some work currently underway and more. Examples include social media opportunities / guidance and a Landlord Charter seeking to drive a more attractive high street estate. This particular work strand includes GLBA but is broader in its trader reach.

All work to date has been purely trader focused but the expectation is that as a high street approach is developed, residents, visitors and others will be asked to contribute. Until then, thoughts via this site are as good as anywhere – and in truth probably the best current place to send them.

[Admin comment: The "background work" that Karl refers to here is the Reimagining Palmers Green initiative mentioned below by Natasha Morris. For more information see A facelift for pG could be the start of a high street renaissance . If you have comments, please make them under that article.]

Following on from Karl's comment - I attach the presentation that was circulated to those traders whose contacts I had collected to date and am happy to post here for wider circulation/comment.

Reimagining Palmers Green Presentation

Thank you for all you are doing Brian, Karl, Natasha...if this could all happen- wow

The death of the UK’s high street story rumbles on with the latest Grimsey report released today. He is now saying, “bricks and mortar retailing can no longer be the anchor for thriving high streets”, instead he indicates they should move with the times and “be repopulated and refashioned as community hubs that include housing, health and leisure, entertainment, education, arts, business / office space and some shops”. I think that’s a message many in PG have been communicating for a long while.


On that popular life-or-death chestnut of parking / free parking he puts the high street's decline down to the growth in popularity of out-of-town shopping centres with their free parking, as well as online shopping. But he dismissed the idea that free or cheaper parking being reintroduced into High Streets would revitalise them: "If it was that simple then people would have done it already." "The point is that the retail proposition in town centres has been overtaken by the more convenient out-of-town parks. The town centres should say 'let them have it'.


People who have followed this debate for-ever will realise that latter point is exactly what David Hughes was saying over and over to local traders (GLBA) a good decade since.


Looked at simply, with all else being pretty much stable, then opening up huge supermarkets (eg Sainsbury Winchmore Hill), enormous shopping centres (eg Westfield), retail parks (pick your own) and then a whole set of new internet shopping channels (mobile, tablet, laptop et al), traditional retail volume has to suffer – big time. It really was that obvious; the trick was to anticipate and plan for the inevitable change before being forced to do so. So it’s a huge shame that cycle lanes got the blame and all the necessary business attention instead. But give it another decade and I’m sure strategic reality will have caught up on that one too.

Spot on Karl.

Gimsey report in summary:

"Among 25 key recommendations, Grimsey’s taskforce calls for a new town centre commission to develop a 20-year strategy for local high streets, abolishing the business rates system and speed up ongoing digital transformation in smaller towns."

Great point about parking. Reinforced by the failed Mary Porter exercise - parking (more and cheaper/free) was a big part of her proposition. It proved to be utterly useless if the high street offer is still all wrong and an unpleasant place to be.

On the speeding up digital transformation theme, and specifically following one strand of the work recently highlighted in a presentation posted by Norris Morris, PG traders now have a quote from a UK award winning organisation in this field to help their cause. The price is small, particularly when shared amongst numerous outlets; call it half a lost cycling legal case, so let’s see what happens next.

All the big journalistic hitters are now on the high street case and singing essentially the same song: The Economist highlights that 16% of sales are now online and expects 40% by 2030 but the inevitable freed up retail space has uses as experience centres and housing; The Sunday Times’ business editorial highlights retail bricks and mortar space having increased by no less than 10% between 2000 and 2016, with online sales going from £nil to £60 bn over the same period, suggesting we are only a small way into the “seismic changes” affecting the industry and “the brutal truth is we have too many shops”; while a major piece in the FT talks of “evident overcapacity” and that there will be ”fewer retailers, fewer shops” and that there will be strugglers until a new equilibrium is reached. The FT also gives the Grimsey report high praise, in particular to “think of high streets as community hubs rather than shopping malls”. “PG high street as a community hub”, now there’s a phrase well over a decade old.