Hope for the high street

Apr 14 2009 by Karen McLauchlan, Evening Gazette

TEES Valley regeneration chiefs have unveiled ambitious plans to breathe new life into the ailing high street.

Today, the Government issued a rallying call for councils to find alternative uses for boarded up shops as the death-rattle of retail failures marks the descent of once thriving shopping centres into ghost towns.

Year-on-year UK retail sales growth slowed to 0.4% in February - the smallest annual increase since 1995. But locally the bid to lift the high street - Lazarus-like - from its death bed has already begun.