High Street UK 2020: Transferring knowledge to facilitate the repositioning, reinventing, rebranding and restructuring of sustainable retail centres.

The changing nature of retail in the UK brings many benefits to consumers but has significant consequences for communities and retailers themselves. In 2012, 54 retail companies failed, closing 3,951 stores between them, affecting 48,142 employees (Source: Centre for Retail Research). Academics at MMU have been studying and predicting large-scale change on the high street for nearly 30 years, but despite all this research, the ever-growing body of evidence from high street data providers as well as government-commissioned reports and extensive media coverage, it is clear that retailers and local actors and agencies responsible for managing change on the high street do not know how to respond effectively. For example, a headline from a recent (14th March 2013) Daily Mail reads "Towns have spent just 7% of Mary Portas' £10million fund to rescue High Streets... and most of it went on reindeer and Peppa Pig costumes". MMU has a successful track record of delivering interventions to support retail and location change, the project's PI (Professor Cathy Parker) has run relevant projects worth in excess of £8m over the past 10 years, therefore we are confident we have the knowledge, experience and reputation to help high street stakeholders to respond to change.

The knowledge exchange activities, designed with 10 towns (such as Congleton) and cities (such as Bristol), chosen by the Institute of Place Management, will bring the knowledge places need to deliver sustainable high streets, directly to decision-makers. Firstly, we will synthesise the existing extensive academic research base of peer-reviewed studies of drivers of retail change/high street change at macro, meso and micro level through utilising an interdisciplinary expert review panel and a well-established ranking method. This will enable an interactive tool to be developed which individual locations can use to forecast change on their high street. The first stage of the project will culminate in a series of local workshops in the 10 partner locations bringing together retailers, local actors and agencies and academics to jointly explore and understand the nature of the retail challenge faced by that location.

Whilst the drivers of change are complex and cross discipline boundaries, the second stage of the project will focus on building a framework for managing change, from the management and marketing literature. The project will review and distil the evidence relating to place interventions and their implications, under the broad categories of 'repositioning', 'reinventing', 'rebranding' and 'restructuring'. For example, a location may need to reposition and reinvent itself as a local centre rather than district centre - with the relevant retail/service mix, and all the corresponding rebranding and physical restructuring (changing the usage of some space from retail to residential, for example). National workshops on these major themes will be led by academic experts (who are all Visiting Researchers within this project) and attended by the partner high streets. These broad approaches will then be contextualised in partnership with 10 user communities, facilitated by a town/city centre manager with over 20 years' experience, so those individual high streets identify an alternative, sustainable future for 2020 and an action plan for achieving that aim.

All the deliverables from the project will be available online, free of charge, through the Institute of Place Management website, thereby disseminating this valuable knowledge to a much wider audience, such as the 400 towns currently involved in the Portas Pilot and associated schemes. In addition, a special 'knowledge exchange' edition of the Journal of Place Management and Development will be published based on the 4 key intervention themes (repositioning, reinventing, rebranding and restructuring). Each of these themes will be explored through a case-study drawn from the partner locations.

A wide range of stakeholders will benefit from this project. Retail academics involved in the project will gain key new insights into the knowledge exchange process to build on its previous experience, and will derive new understanding of the retail sector and the high street, their needs, drivers and development opportunities. In addition, the utilisation of the Delphi Technique using academic experts from a range of disciplines (retail, geography, planning, urban regeneration, public administration, management, marketing etc.) will foster cross-disciplinary knowledge exchange, helping to broaden the 'real-world' understanding of a research problem in context (the changing nature of the high street) by the end of the project (2014). Broader academic impact about the benefits of knowledge exchange will be achieved through the publication of a special issue of the Journal of Place Management and Development.

Private sector - A range of business will also benefit from the project. For example, retailers and other high street commercial operators (such as retail property owners) will learn first hand about specific opportunities on their high street and how to work collectively and adapt their businesses to exploit these opportunities (such as meeting the needs of an ageing population) by 2020. This will enhance the efficiency, performance and sustainability of high street businesses/organisations. The UK High Street 2020 forecasting model will also be available to commercial operators (such as Springboard) that support the retail sector (such as providers of retail data) to improve the quality of service they provide, thereby improving the quality of decision making effecting the retail sector and the high street.

Policy-makers - Those previously responsible for managing change on the high street at a local level (predominantly local authorities) will have a simple interactive tool to model the diverse range of impacts on the high street as well as a range of possible interventions to bring about sustainable change. A quote from our partners, Ballymena council illustrates this "While I understand the work is subject to funding the project comes at a very appropriate time for us. Our overarching strategy of 'Destination Ballymena' encompasses everything we do in terms of Councils core objectives". The 10 sustainable high street action plans developed within this project will add to the evidence base to inform national policy surrounding, for example, high street innovation, regeneration, planning and localism.

Third and public sectors - More actors who have agency to bring about change on the high street will be trained in using the modelling tool and the range of interventions available to them, thereby empowering them with data and knowledge that would not normally be available to them. This will contribute to increasing public awareness and understanding of science, economic and societal issues. Strengthening local partnerships and their role in managing change is an integral part of this project and involves a wide range of stakeholders from the public, private and third sectors, such as local residents associations etc. This enhances the efficiency and performance of public services, as it builds local capacity for local economic development and regeneration and enhancing cultural enrichment. A sustainable high street will improve the quality of life of local communities. Healthy high streets contribute toward wealth creation and economic prosperity i.e. the creation and growth of local companies and jobs; enhancing business revenue in the local economy and innovation within a specific location as well as providing opportunities for cultural and social exchange, leisure, exercise and education. The project will impact on the quality of life of thousands of UK citizens, who are regular users of high street services and space, or could be, if they met the needs of local communities more effectively.