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You and Yours: Call You and Yours

Call You and Yours

13/12/2011

BBC Radio 4 - You and Yours, Call You and Yours

Julian Worricker takes calls on proposals by Mary Portas for saving the high street.

Julian Worricker presents an opportunity for listeners to contribute their views on a report into how to save the high street by retail expert Mary Portas.

Call You and Yours with Julian Worricker. Mary Portas' report on the high street is published today. Here's a flavour of what she's proposing. Relaxing licensing rules for market stalls to make it easier for people to set up stands, a national market day helping to drive traffic towards nearby shops, a relaxation - too - of the restrictions on night-time deliveries. She also wants free parking in certain areas, some form of high street management system to form coherent policies as well as a review of business rates and shop rents. On out-of-town shopping centres she says there are compelling instances where they have drained trade from a nearby town, but it would be naive and far too easy to think that they are to blame for the decline of the high street. She says the fact is that the major supermarkets and malls have delivered highly convenient, needs-based retailing, which serves today's consumers well.

She's had support from some quarters; Richard Dodd from the British Retail Consortium said there were a good number of sensible ideas in the report. But council leaders have been critical because they haven't been consulted. Peter Box of the Local Government Association said that councils play a crucial role in growing local economies and improving high streets, and need to be suitably consulted if that's to be achieved.

If you work in retail, what do you think of Mary Portas' proposals? Are you based in a struggling high street, or out of town? When you shop, what changes are you seeing....maybe you've changed your shopping habits in recent times? More online, less in the store? What about the issues of parking charges and of a greater emphasis on markets? 03700 100 444 is the number to call - dialling it will cost you the same as a call to an 01 or an 02 number - you can e-mail via bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours, or you can text to 84844....and if you do that it will cost you your standard operator message rate, and we may call you back on that number. And just to say we've decided to concentrate on this issue in today's programme because it's something we've followed very closely on You & Yours in recent times....Europe, as trailed yesterday, we will no doubt return to in the near future.

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