Plymouth's free wi-fi plans supported by retail chief's high street review

Plymouth City Council is ahead of the majority of local authorities in launching a strategy to support the city centre’s high street retailers according to a report released by former Wickes chief executive Bill Grimsey.

Plymouth has already begun plans to implement a free wi-fi system for use on the high street, one of the key recommendations of the report published today.

The report is released amid a clash between Mr Grimsey and TV retail expert Mary Portas over the future of the UK's high streets.

The row began when Grimsey said that efforts by Portas to improve city centre retailers were “little more than a PR stunt”, ahead of the release of his own review (on Wednesday 4 September).

Portas responded: "When you get consistently knocked by him you think, 'what's the problem? Do you really want change or do you want headlines?'"

The Grimsey review suggests that town centres and high streets require a minister separate to the existing Business Secretary, and urges Councils to organise a team to improve town centres.

Grimsey states that of the 100 local authorities examined in the report fewer than half had any strategy in place to aid their retail areas.

Other recommendations of Grimsey’s review include founding a set of town centre commissions responsible for planning, a resetting of business rates, and a scheme which offers a 50% reduction of tax on stores which have been empty for longer than 12 months.

The review also calls for the introduction of a compulsory levy on major chains – estimated at a one-off tax of £550 million.

The British independent Retailers Association has already raised issue with the levy claiming that it would only address the situation in the short term.

So far no HM Treasury officials have commented on the review.

Mary Portas, also known as the 'Queen of Shops', was commissioned by the Government to produce a similar report on the UK’s high streets in 2011, which resulted in the launch of the “Portas Pilots”. These have provided funding of up to £100,000 to make significant improvements to 27 town centres.

In Devon; Tiverton, which was named in the second wave of pilots, has been given significant funding to improve its parking facilities and hopes to attract coaches of tourists and other vistors to the town centre.

However Portas was criticised by MPs at a Communities and Local Government Committee hearing yesterday for influencing the Government’s choice of town for the sake of making better television.

The scheme was also criticised for allegedly making slow progress; with some local teams spending grants ineffectively, including the hiring of a person in a Peppa Pig costume at a cost of £1,610 by Dartford Council in Kent.

Portas rejected criticism however, saying that the pilots were being judged too soon, and that it would take several years for the changes to show. She has, however, conceded that a more structured guide to high street improvements as suggested by Grimsey would help some councils that didn’t know how to best spend their money.

Portas said: "I don't think the pressure should be on me about what's been done; the pressure should be on the government."