By the time you read this, there will be just two shopping days left before Christmas.  Now the good news is that we still have plenty of excellent shops down our market town high streets across the area.  So if you’ve left it to the last minute you can get out to Malmesbury, Cricklade, Royal Wootton Bassett, Calne or Chippenham and pick up the last remaining stocking fillers. (Although I recommend against my experience of stark panic last year when I was positively the last shopper in Melksham as they were busily trying to shut up shop.)

But the bad news is that we are changing our shopping habits.  How many of us bought presents on the internet, cheerily delivered to our front doors in a van?  How many of us went to out of town shopping centres - either locally with food superstores increasingly selling other things, or even to mega hypermarkets like Cribbs Causeway?  A fair few, I suspect.  And ‘why not’, you may well ask. ‘We have increasingly sophisticated demands, and if we can get what we want in those outlets, what’s the problem with that?’

Well the problem with that is that every single pound spent by credit card for internet purchases, or spent in out of town hypermarkets is one less pound spent on the high street.  And the end result of that is the ugly rash of mobile phone shops, travel agents and charity shops which then replace the once profitable family-run stores down our high streets.

So I very much support the Mary Portas approach to reviving (or even just preserving) our town centres.  Community life depends on it, as what could be more soul-less than a desperate rush around Toys R Us and the rest in some anonymous car park.  Some of her ideas will require a leap of faith by retailers and town councils. The cost of parking has some role to play in that, although it’s a complex issue, since parking charges are also used to deter non-shoppers from blocking up available spaces.  There must be more imaginative ways to use empty shops for community or other purposes; the vacant flats above shops must be given a new lease of life; there should be rate concessions for new businesses to encourage a vibrant mix of shops, housing and service businesses; market stalls of a high quality including farmers markets should be encouraged in every way, as should pavement cafes and restaurants and pubs.

Combine an imaginative regeneration of our town centres with tight restrictions on out of town shopping (and most out of town development come to that) and you stand a chance of creating a lively, colourful feel about town centres.  Malmesbury, for example, does not need a supermarket on the outskirts, whether Waitrose or Sainsbury’s. They are not building for local people.  They are building for the passing trade, and just trying to bribe local people into supporting their lucrative ambitions.  Well my own view is that either would ruin Malmesbury High Street, and I hope that  Malmesbury Town Council and the Wiltshire Unitary will resists their blandishments and refuse any such planning application.

So if you’ve got time to read this, the chances are you’re ready for Christmas, and I hope that you have put a decent bit of business the way of our family run town centre traders, or that if you failed to do so, your conscience will prick you in the New Year.  But in the meantime I wish you all a Very Happy Christmas.  Eat, drink and be merry, for who knows what the future may hold for all of us?