Written for Develop Croydon, new partner Qudo have looked at the coronavirus pandemic and asked – could it rescue our high streets?

When most shops were closed and the majority of the population were living in isolation, it might have seemed crazy to look at coronavirus as an opportunity, but it might just prove to be the key to a radical redesign of an ailing retail sector.

Perverse as it may sound, we could be witnessing the perfect storm that brings to an end the obsession of constantly commuting to a central destination for work at exactly the same time planners and retailers are desperately searching for an effective intervention to prevent the permanent death of the traditional town centre.

The high street’s demise is a strange one when you consider how much most of us like buying new stuff. Be it fashion, tech, car accessories, music, art, or any other commodity we have for years enjoyed the retail experience and that love has never truly diminished. Other factors however have changed and through that change, the economics for shop retail have been lost. What happened is we all became time poor.

There is no technology dividend in terms of down time, we just work smarter for longer. The housing market and general cost of living has gone beyond the reach of most single earning families, so most adults are either out there in near fulltime employment or combining work with the care of the young and the old. Work calls and we answer, but despite the flexibility that has, to some extent, been on offer since the start of the millennium thanks to laptops and mobile phones and is now so clear with the power of the internet and the dominance of cloud computing, ‘management’ has seemed still to need to see the workforce to believe they are indeed working.

Enter social distancing and an order to work from home ‘if at all possible’, and not just for a day or a week but for five months or more. British businesses are being forced to examine the possibilities of effective remote teams and under these forced conditions, technology is finally able to demonstrate its effect. Initially we saw a scramble to get voice services running and since then we have seen cloud computing and collaboration change this experience from isolation to remote interaction. We are learning fast and adapting well.

The circumstances are however far from ideal. As well as the workforce being at home, so were the kids, which highlights challenges to the broadband services, the ambient noise in the house and the space to set up office. Whilst in lockdown we readily accept a child walking behind a colleague asking, ‘how long will you be?’ but long-term we are discovering while a lot of people can work remotely, home is not always the best location.

So, THE PERFECT STORM; businesses need to mitigate the risk of this happening again and make working remotely business as usual (true business continuity). The workforce can see the potential benefits of being local but for some they need a local office not a home office. The retailers in the town centre need footfall and a bigger active community throughout the seven trading days. The council need to get full occupation of the town centre units and the transport network needs to spread the time of business travel over a greater proportion of the working day.

Worker hubs, a booming concept ironically in the centre of many cities, must now become the cornerstone of town centre planning. The message to local councils should be ‘If you build it, they will come’, and finally, thanks to the impact of this crisis, business owners are listening. Working pods, like the kitchen table at home, supported by high-speed broadband and noise cancelling headsets can become our workstation for a reasonable percentage of the working week. Travel to offices for meetings, training, team activity and socialising will still be vital but the regimented morning commute for all will not. Just imaging a failed or failing department store revitalised by the inclusion of four or five cool looking work hubs, or a high street with a work hub every 10th retail unit. Customers and the retail sector working in close harmony; as a resident of Welwyn Garden City, I think Ebenezer Howard would be very impressed, 100 years on from his creation based on a similar principle.

A better work life balance, more daytime footfall in our town centres, a stronger local community, more flexibility for working/caring parents, less crowding on trains and buses, a reduction in pollution, more resilience in UK business, and better personal & work productivity for us all. It has been a painful way for society to have learnt this but there is a change that can answer many questions, we just need the local government minister, the business secretary and businesses leaders (small and large) to get engaging, planning and acting. The tired old ways should be eradicated alongside the virus itself and replaced by a technology driven new ‘local’ economic model.