Local councils and retail giants will deploy a small army of “social distancing wardens” on Monday to police crowds as non-essential shops open their doors after almost three months of lockdown.

Councils across the country have hired or redeployed staff to ensure shoppers and retailers comply with social distancing rules. And big chain stores, including Primark, Ikea and John Lewis, have brought in extra security staff. 

The councils and retailers hope the wardens will prevent unruly queues as people rush back to clothes, homewares and electrical shops that have been closed since March. More than 1,000 people were reported to have queued outside Ikea warehouse stores, some turning up at 5.30am, when the Swedish chain was allowed to open two weeks ago. 

Labour will allow councils to seize abandoned shops to give them a new lease of life as cooperatives or community centres, a policy designed to revive struggling high streets.

Jeremy Corbyn is expected to announce the shake-up on a visit to a high street in Bolton on Saturday, calling the sight of boarded-up shops a “symptom of economic decay” which is lowering living standards.

Under the Labour proposals, local authorities could offer properties which had been vacant for 12 months to startups, cooperative businesses and community projects.

The policy was prompted by a study by the Local Data Company which found more than 10% of town centre shops were empty. About 29,000 retail units are estimated to have been left empty for at least a year, according to the study, which found that the high-street vacancy rate rose last year to 11.5% and that 4.8% of vacant space on high streets had been vacant for more than two years. In shopping centres, that number rose to 5.8%.

I think along with Timpsons (another story for another day) some small businesses are seen to bolster everywhere they crop up and other seem a bit too corporate – just a thought. As this article reveals this supposedly homespun business on many a rural High Street is going from strength to strength.

It’s not all steak bakes and sausage rolls. Attempts by Greggs to reinvent itself as a healthier, Pret a Manger-style coffee shop chain are starting to pay off with half-year profits up nearly 50%.

The bakery chain, with 1,661 stores in Britain, introduced a range of freshly made sandwiches with fewer than 400 calories, and less salt and sugar. Its coffee blend has been changed, according to Greggs, to “make it taste smoother”.

Under its new boss, Roger Whiteside, Greggs has also been refitting its stores and adding more seating to tap into the unabated growth in coffee shops in Britain. Opening hours have been extended by half an hour in the morning and the evening (many Greggs shops are now open from 7am until 5.30pm) to catch people on their way into work and on their way home. Low commodity price inflation (such as lower pork and wheat prices) and the increasing tendency to eat food on the go are also boosting sales.

Greggs’ finance director, Richard Hutton, said: “We want to make sure we keep pace with changing taste. People have developed a taste for good coffee and healthy food.”

He said the Treasury had the ability to fix the system so that the Government always receives the same tax take from retailers whatever the state of the economy, and this must change.

In a strongly worded attack on the present system, the proprietor of Topshop owner Arcadia said that the Government deliberately inflated rates despite the fact that rents were falling because of the poor state of the economy. He called for a rates freeze and a “rates holiday” for small shop owners.

Sir Philip said that the Government’s decision to delay a rates revaluation until 2017 did not take account of the fact that “the world has changed” since the last review in 2008.

“There was due to be a revaluation in 2015 and they are now trying to push it to 2017,” Sir Philip said.

“In the meantime what they [the Government} are able to use is a mechanism [called the] ‘uniform business rate’ [and] if there is a devaluation or the rent moves downwards they have this mechanism where they can inflate, they can create a value of their own.

“The ideas that emerged throughout the sessions encompassed everything from “bibliotherapy”, personal shopping, physical membership clubs, writers in residence, listening ports for audio books, moveable book shelves and a whole range of products and services including wedding gift lists, suggesting that future bookshops will be very much a social experience. The possibility of performances, art installations, gigs and exhibitions was also discussed.”

Now it seems to me that most people cant get a personal service as easily or with as much fulfillment as the real thing virtually – hardressing, a coffee etc come to mind. Putting the sort of services indicated above into the challenging environment of a bookshop might well give it a fighting chance. They may also create interesting lateral thoughts for other purveyors of challenged items. I would love to see more record shops personally, stocking vinyl, but that’s probably just a sign of my age!