Are our high streets making us fat? Are you, dear landlord/town planner/letting agent ruining our waistlines and perpetuating the country’s growing obesity problem?
A report from the Royal Society for Public Health this week ranked the top 10 most healthy and unhealthy – that’s you Preston, Middlesbrough, Coventry, Blackpool, Northampton, Wolverhampton, Grimsby, Huddersfield, Stoke-on-Trent and Eastbourne – high streets across the UK.
The list was the stuff Daily Mail and local newspaper journalists dream of, but there is a serious angle for our industry too.
The high street is in decline. There are more vacant units than shops opening. Retail is slowly but surely moving online, out-of-town continues to grow, and clustering is becoming more prevalent, with charity shops, payday loan providers and fast-food restaurants taking up much of the space on our high streets.
At the same time, obesity levels are skyrocketing, with a shocking one in 10 children being obese when they start primary school. That’s a 10th of our children being obese by the age of four. That number more than doubles to 19.1% by the time they are 10.
Something has to be done about that. If there is a role that the built environment can play, then shouldn’t we play it? And with a general election looming, surely this is something that ministers too should be thinking about?
Over the past two weeks I have had the opportunity to quiz both the Conservatives and Labour – thank you Capital & Regional and Mishcon de Reya – on their proposals to save our high streets (p33). The need for diversification and a mix of uses, a general dislike for too many payday loan shops, bookies etc, and a need for more joined-up thinking were mentioned. But not once was the issue of the health and wellbeing of the people that frequent and live close to those high streets raised.
And, really, why should it be? We all have personal choice. I can choose to go into one of the many fast food joints on my high street, or can choose not too. That’s up to me, right?
The answer, of course, is yes. But what is on offer does influence our choice, so should we – landlords, occupiers, BIDs, agents, local authorities – have some obligation to the nation’s health?
The RSPH believes there is a role that the built environment can play – and perhaps if the property industry could reduce the annual cost of obesity to the NHS, estimated to be around £47bn, government would be a little kinder to it in terms of taxes. No?
The body wants the next government to introduce a range of measures to make high streets more health-promoting, including giving local authorities greater planning powers to prevent the proliferation of betting shops, payday lenders and fast food outlets; making public health criteria a condition of licensing for all business types; legislating to enable councils to set their own differential business rates to encourage healthier outlets and discourage those that are detrimental to health; and to put a limit of 5% of each type of business on a high street to avoid oversaturation and provide affordable choice.
Food for thought.
London is dead. Long live the regions. Well, okay, London is not dead, it is alive and kicking, but so too are the regions. Birmingham is fast becoming an attractive proposition for some of the world’s biggest financial institutions. First there was Deutsche Bank and now HSBC (p30). And the Middle Eastern backers of Manchester City football club are hatching plans to build a Canary Wharf of the north (p27). Both cities offer occupiers the same quality space as the capital, but at a fraction of the price. The question is, who moves next? Watch this space.
