Five high streets have been chosen to join a pilot scheme aimed at supporting local businesses and reviving town centres.
New figures have revealed that visitors to high streets remain 14% down on pre-pandemic levels.
In an effort to support local businesses, Power to Change, which backs community businesses in England, has named five more high streets that will be designated Community Improvement Districts (CID).
CIDs already operate in Scotland and build on Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), where businesses collaborate to effect change in an area in order to spur regeneration and boost business.
The key difference with CIDs is that they seek to provide local people, and community organisations, as well as businesses, a say over the strategic direction of local high streets.
The new Community Improvement District pilots are: Skelmersdale, Lancashire; Hendon, Sunderland; Ipswich, Suffolk; Stretford, Greater Manchester; and Wolverton, Milton Keynes.
These pilots will explore and test how CIDs could work in different places. They join Kilburn High Road and Wood Green, in north London, named England’s first Community Improvement Districts earlier this year.
Jenny Sansom, Community Improvement District pilot lead at Power to Change, said: ‘If we are to reverse the plague of identikit high streets on the one hand and tackle shuttered-up buildings on the other, we must give communities ownership and say over their town centres.
‘In Scotland, Community Improvement Districts are already reinventing towns by empowering communities, alongside local businesses and councils, to set the direction for their high street.
‘Rolling out this approach in England has the potential to turn the tide on decline by acting as a catalyst for bold, creative high streets that move beyond the outdated retail-dominated model and offer people services and experiences not available online.’
