Thriving market towns and villages – Central Bedfordshire 2050

We want our town centres and high streets to meet 21st century needs, and our community spaces and facilities to enable us to connect.

Opportunities

Leisure and cultural experiences are an increasingly important reason to visit our market town centres and high streets — from personalised customer service to events, concerts, and food and drink.

Community spaces and social interaction will continue to bring people to the high street — particularly through pop-ups and other community-led initiatives that can reduce empty units.

People want to see more mixed use on their high street, including health and leisure services. The use of co-location and shared units could help facilitate this.

Challenges

The rural nature of Central Bedfordshire makes the use of private cars popular. This can create congestion and parking challenges in historic market town centres, and make it difficult for many to access these areas.

Small local businesses such as high street independents can be particularly vulnerable to central government policy changes, such as business rate rises.

The changing nature of retail and the rise in online shopping is already causing significant disruption to high street land uses. Helping Central Bedfordshire businesses adapt will be a challenge.

Trends

The high street

5,000 high street stores have closed during the past 12 months in the UK — that’s nearly 416 per month.

Empty shops

In July 2019, the proportion of all shops that are empty reached 0.3%, its highest level since January 2015.