Why is Britain no longer a nation of shopkeepers?

Planning issues, and the decisions taken by the authorities - be they local, national or even international - can make a massive impact, one way or the other, and this should not be under-estimated. It could be permission to grant planning for an out-of-town shopping development, and with it, the risk of taking business away from the centre, or the decision to increase parking costs - and thereby disincentivising shoppers. But planners have a big influence and I will be investigating how we can plan to attract small retailers back into town centres.

Parking is another thorny issue. To local government, it is a welcome source of revenue, and ditto the money from enthusiastically enforced Penalty Charge Notices - parking fines to you and me. It supplements the grants local authorities receive from central government and I accept it is a difficult balance. It is one achieved by too few councils and when it is missed it is the town centres that suffer. You have to ask yourself, though, why people should pay for the privilege of helping to generate the local economy when they can park free of charge at an out-of-town superstore or shopping mall?

And what about the staff that work in town centre shops? They are rarely well paid and it is grossly unfair to expect them to pay a daily parking charge for the privilege of going to work. Which leads me on to the standard of local transportation - public services, such as buses.

Without good transportation, or a cheap means of accessing their employment, many people find working in town centre high streets just too expensive and simply not worth it.

A walk around my own town centre in Northampton, and others I have visited recently, confirms the problems I have alluded to and also the decrease in the number of independent retailers. But we should not be surprised. Planning and parking are just some of the numerous hurdles these people have to overcome. Retailers are increasingly hampered by over-taxing and increasingly burdensome regulations from central and local government.

It is a sobering thought that 7,337 independent retailers closed between 2000 and 2004 and nationally there is - on average - a 13% town centre shop vacancy rate.

Clearly all retailers must respond to the demands of their customers, as any business has to do, but I also believe that government can take positive action to help save their futures and our high streets. The impact of regulation has an overwhelming influence on the starting up and running of small businesses, affecting their longevity, profitability and siting. In fact, 77% of respondents to a recent Forum of Private Business survey thought a reduction in business rates would be helpful. Yet the Government announced recently it was looking into a supplementary business rate!

Crimes against business make up 20% of recorded crime in the UK, and 57% of businesses have been victims of crime in the past twelve months. As though that were not enough, town centres have become - in many cases - intimidating places to visit because of gangs loitering and acting anti-socially, often prompted by alcohol. That is not what people want to see when they are out shopping.

All too often scarce financial resources are wasted by the necessity of dealing with the after effects of a crime, which in turn deters further investment and employment opportunities, and can hasten business closure. If a business closes down, or relocates, it is another contributing factor to the decline in town centres, and wider communities.

Ironically, it was Napoleon, a Frenchman, who called England "a nation of shopkeepers". Yet France is a country notable for many of its independent retailers, and their cause is helped in that 'below cost selling' is banned there. But not here - and it is another challenge our beleagued small retailers have to face. The superstores, in their own battles for custom, can afford to do it; but the smaller retailers simply cannot keep the pace.

It is not all doom and gloom, though. Independent shops will never disappear,and though it is true to say they willreduce in number, hope does exist.

There is certainly scope to improve the variety and individuality of our town centres, but to do so we need to increasem the number of people who visit them. The big question that I face, as I undertake my commission into the future of town centres, is how we reverse the trend.

A new approach is needed to regenerate towns and one of the ways of doing this is better to understand how best to help the small shops in the high street. I hope that, by better understanding those problems, we can find solutions that will help them to grow, and through that growth, see an improvement in the quality of our town centres - and with it, the return of the general public.

Though superstores and shopping malls are here to stay, there is no reason why we cannot recreate the thriving town centres many of us remember from days gone by.