The UK's high streets are in an urgent state of disrepair. In the last year, approximately 50 high street shops have permanently closed every day in the UK, an alarming number and still rising. E-Commerce is the biggest challenge that high street retailers have faced in a century and the problem is predicted to get worse.

What's more, around 85,000 shop-based jobs have disappeared have disappeared in the UK in 2018 according to the British Retail Consortium, a result of, for example, the collapse of large department stores such as Toys R Us, Maplin and BHS, followed by Debenhams, Jack Wills and Mothercare in 2019. 

Research has found that 1 in 10 people in the UK will do more online shopping in the next 5 to 10 years and inevitably, this will result in more well known retailers either closing stores or going bankrupt completely, resulting in many thousands more people being unemployed and having a lasting effect on how our high streets and shopping areas look. This is before the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has made this worse still. 

While there are some benefits to online shopping, such as convenience, product availability, etc there are disadvantages and major consequences that the impact of online shopping has on other people, such as shop staff being made redundant and the negative effect it has on high streets. 

The UK Government URGENTLY needs to look at action that can be taken to bring back both people and businesses to the UK's high streets and shopping areas, and to make them the busy, vibrant places they once were, again.