Planning minister aims make it simpler to convert redundant shops and farm buildings into homes INTERNET shopping has killed the British high street and it’s time we accepted it. That’s the view of planning minister Nick Boles who now aims to make it much easier for empty and boarded-up shops to be turned into homes. Local authorities across England will be urged this week to concentrate their efforts on revitalising shopping to just one or two "prime streets". The rest can be converted into homes or apartments. Meanwhile, farmers will be told they can turn redundant barns and stables into housing. Boles’s radical proposals, contained in a consultation document due out this week, mark “a dramatic shift in policy” from a coalition government that just two years ago hired 'Queen of Shops' Mary Portas to save the high street, says the Daily Telegraph. Only in June, she attacked the government for continually refusing to commit to the "town centre first" policy she advocates. The Boles solution has been greeted warmly by those who have been demanding radical solutions to provide new housing stock without building on green belt land. Campaigner Bill Grimsey told the Telegraph: "At last the message is getting through, that there are high streets out there that do need to be considered in a very different way. It's only going to get worse. "We have been saying it for some time, high streets cannot continue to serve solely as a retail destination, they have to be seen as a community hub." An unnamed executive told the paper: "Given the over-expansion into out-of-town shopping, and now the rise of the internet, there is just too much retail space. I think it's a clear and honest statement by the minister." An estimated 14 per cent of high street shops are empty after the credit crisis knocked out Woolworths and HMV among other well-known retail chains. Online shopping already accounts for approximately £1 in every £10 spent on retail - and it’s rising. Source: The Week UK
