Blaise Tapp: If we lose our high streets, we lose our communities

However, above all of those, the one thing I value as much as anything else is our bustling High Street, which is very much the beating heart of our community. Yes, there is the odd empty unit - although most haven’t tended to stay vacant for too long over the years - and we could do with fewer vape shops but ours is the blueprint for how a local high street should look.

There’s been much doom and gloom about our town centres over the past couple of decades but many, like ours, are still buzzing with activity and energy but there are genuine fears that 2026 could be the toughest year yet, which is saying something when you consider that we’ve endured lockdowns and a painful cost of living crisis, which endures for millions.

In recent weeks I’ve had grim conversations with good friends and acquaintances who run businesses in the hospitality industry who genuinely believe that this might be the year that they finally shut their doors for good, despite the fact that they’re as busy as they have been since before we all wore masks and sang Happy Birthday in the bathroom. They fear that the business rate rise, which is due to come into effect in a few months’ time, will be the final nail in a coffin which has been with the undertakers for years.

This is the same rate rise that the Government is expected to make a mini u-turn on by announcing that pubs, the most British of institutions, will be exempt from the increase, which has prompted those running shops, cafes and a host of other vital businesses ‘what about us?’

Apart from my own front room, the pub, especially those that know how to keep a pint and sell pork scratchings, is my favourite place to be but are they more important to our economy than the local bakers or coffee shops, which dominate many a high street? The difficulty for these other businesses is that they lack the history and the place in the public's heart that boozers do.

I’m glad that I don’t have to make decisions more important than whether or not to have Marmite on my toast each morning, but there has to be another way that Government-types can bolster the public finances than push local businesses closer to the brink.

After all, where would our communities be without our high streets?