IT must be obvious to readers that running a shop in one of our town centres is a challenge that gets tougher by the day. The change in shopping habits that has meant many people turning to buying goods online has caused our town centre shopping areas to lose many once thriving retail businesses that have now been replaced by coffee houses or charity shops.

A recent chance meeting with a young man called Glen gave me the inspiration to look more deeply into the difficulties facing the local small shop and business proprietors. Glen has recently started a micro brewery and has ambitions to expand his business to create jobs and bring further wealth to the area as well as to himself.

He needs and deserves support from central and local government but is frustrated by the lack of this. He told me of the thoughts he had on how local town centres could be transformed into attractive and prosperous shopping centres.

Inspired by meeting Glen, I began my research and soon came across a document that is published under the title The Grimsey Review. The author is Bill Grimsey, the CEO of Wickes, Iceland and Focus DIY. In fact, Bill has published two reviews, the first in 2013 and the second in March this year.

His reviews not only go into great detail in analysing the reasons for so many town centre shops failing to survive, they also set out clear objectives and the recommendations on how these can be met. The problem is that many of the recommendations contradict the policies adopted by central and local government. This particularly applies to the way that the business rates and local tax systems could be changed to provide aid to small businesses.

Grimsey suggests that new money would not be required for this. It could be funded by trimming slightly the money given by Government to charities and the money thus released being allocated to local councils with the condition it be ring-fenced to aid small businesses that qualify for it.

The list of Grimsey Review recommendations is too long to be published in this article. It came as little surprise to me to learn that the review has largely been ignored by UK local and central government.

Fortunately, the town of Roesalare, in Belgium, has a progressive thinking town council and they took the Grimsey Review of 2013 to heart and adopted most of its recommendations. The result has been a transformation of retail business in that Flemish town of 62,000 population.

Rosealare is now being described throughout Europe and beyond as ‘The Ideal Shopping City’. It is described as a trendy shopping city where life is good. Much thought, effort and investment has gone into making retail shopping in the city fit in with 21st-century lifestyles with all that means in terms of acknowledging the growing influence and reliance upon technology.

The Grimsey Review calls for the creation of town centre hubs, possibly based on the local library, that pop-up businesses could use to provide an inexpensive way for traders to have a temporary stall or office.

Wiltshire Council has taken some steps in this direction but there is still much to do to fully embrace Bill Grimsey’s ideas that come close to matching those mentioned to me by the aforementioned Glen.

The Grimsey Review gives the means to revitalise town centre shopping. Rosealare has proved Bill Grimsey right. We just need the political will in Wiltshire to follow the example set by the Rosealare City Council.