Leader comment: Are Scotland’s high streets in terminal decline?

A stroll along a local high street in Scotland can be a depressing experience these days.

Boarded-up units, ‘to let’ signs and closing down sales pepper the once bustling thoroughfares. Elsewhere charity shops and pop-up units have moved in where long-established firms once stood.

Bank branches have shut up shop so even those with money to spend have nowhere to withdraw it.

The latest figures revealed today make for particularly grim reading.

Outside of cities, at least 414 shops, banks, and other premises have closed since the start of 2016 - or an average of nine a month.

Some will point out this decline is simply an inevitable result of changing shopping habits, and that it should be accepted as a sign of the internet-driven times. So should we give up?

The Federation of Small Businesses does not think so and has now urged Ministers in Edinburgh and London to take action, not to recover what we once had, but to invest in how we will be using our high streets in the future. The body proposes a commission to tackle the rise of vacant properties as well as rolling out a standard small business lease for commercial premises.

Put simply, it needs to be as cheap and easy for independent business to take up high street property.

But it is also realistic, and the organisation’s policy chair Andrew McRae is clearly not expecting miracles.

“After the wave of recent closures, we need to rethink how we use our high streets,” he says today.

“A new commission should investigate the barriers to bringing vacant properties back into use, even if that means turning offices into housing, or department stores into art galleries.”

In the meantime, we all have a role to play.

By committing to shopping local where we can, we will not only improve our own carbon footprint and often the quality of our purchases, but help preserve precious local amenities, support local employment and aid the local economy.

Nine shops are closing in Scotland’s towns and villages every month and once they are gone, they are gone for good.

No-one wants to see our high streets in terminal decline, but it will take concerted action from Government, local authorities and local communities themselves to prevent that from happening.