Across England many of our high streets and town centres are in decline. But across the country, communities are stepping in to take back their high streets. Following the publication of our 2019 paper, Take Back the High Street: putting communities in charge of their own town centres, we’ve supported projects that test the conditions to make this possible and developed policy ideas to help more communities have the power to create vibrant and resilient high streets that work for them. Recently this included piloting Community Improvement Districts as a governance model, and researching the impact of high street decline – our latest report, the ‘Shuttered Front’, indicates that the declining high street impacts voting intentions, with Reform overperforming in places seeing and feeling high street decline.
Since the spring of 2025, Power to Change has been collaborating with five community businesses to test and learn from innovative community-led approaches to revitalising England’s high streets and town centres, through our Community-Led High Street Innovators (CLSHI) programme. CLHSI supports community businesses to develop and strengthen their work on the high street, using community-led approaches to regenerate their local places. The programme focuses on communities taking space on high streets and increasing their role in decision-making about their local high street or town centre.
Our Innovators
We’ve been working with five community businesses, our innovators, to explore different approaches to community-led high street regeneration:
Make CIC: Testing High Street Rental Auctions and community-led town centre governance in Birkenhead.
Artspace Lifespace: Investigating the use of meanwhile space in regenerating city centres, and approaches to securing long-term and affordable creative and community space in central Bristol.
Southmead Development Trust: Approaching high street revitalisation through the lens of neighbourhood regeneration and community-led housing in north Bristol.
The Arcade Group: Investigating the potential of a heritage asset to kickstart town centre regeneration in Dewsbury.
Manchester Digital Laboratories (MadLab): Testing new approaches to cultural placemaking to avoid extractive town centre regeneration in Stockport.
Learning, sharing and shaping what comes next
Community-Led High Street Innovators brings together learning from our five Innovators alongside Power to Change’s high street policy reference group. The reference group includes policymakers and influencers, funders and sector experts to explore the complex challenges of high street and town centre regeneration while promoting community-led development.
Nine months into our year-long demonstrator, we’ve been learning alongside each Innovator as they develop and deliver work that’s impacting their local high streets and town centres. We’ve facilitated peer learning, and hosted study visits to Bristol, Birkenhead and Stockport, exploring each place in its local context, and strengthening connections between Innovators and the reference group. Building on this, we’re now beginning to share insights from the five Innovators, and from the programme as a whole.
Over the coming months, you’ll be hearing more from our Innovators – their reflections, the challenges and opportunities they’ve encountered, while working to shape local high streets and town centres that are more vibrant, and better reflect the communities they serve. Later in spring 2026, we’ll publish a programme report that captures learning from CLHSI, and sets out policy recommendations for change, enabling communities to play a greater role in creating vibrant and resilient places and spaces – where people living and working locally can influence decisions and connect with one another.
If you’re interested in this work, and in supporting new ways for communities to steward their local high streets and town centres – shaping the long-term future of their places through community ownership, governance and greater power-sharing with the public and private sector – we’d love to hear from you.
Get in touch with Kate McKenzie, Practice and Innovation Manager, at kate.mckenzie@powertochange.org.uk
