As the British high street becomes ever more important following the lifting of coronavirus restrictions, the Office for National Statistics has compiled a picture of what it looked like pre-pandemic.
The exercise is in order to allow the ONS to make accurate data comparisons going forwards, but it does reveal some surprising facts about life as we used to know it:
> Hub town high streets (those towns that support mainly rural regions) have retained more of a retail focus than other places, being composed of 36% retail addresses, compared with 29% in Great Britain overall
> Retail employment on the high street has declined across all regions and countries between 2015 and 2018, with the exception of the North West where it has grown by 4%.
> The population living within easy walking distance of a high street is predominantly in the 16 to 64 years age group, more so than in a local authority’s non-high street areas
> Many of the people living on or around high streets in British cities are higher education students
> Offices accounted for around 11% of all addresses on British high streets in March 2020.
These statistics hide some wide variation, for example the proportion of addresses on the high street categorised as retail in March 2020 ranged from 11% in the London Borough of Islington, to 63% in Selby, Yorkshire and The Humber.
