The head of Sainsbury’s believes town centres have only themselves to blame for their demise

SAINSBURY’S CHIEF executive Justin King has reignited the debate over the future of Britain’s ailing high streets, claiming many town centres have only themselves to blame for their derelict state.

In a speech he is due to deliver today at the Guildhall in the City of London, King will deny that supermarkets are responsible for the demise of the high street, which he says has failed to adapt to society’s needs. According to King, many shoppers simply don’t have the time to “potter between the butcher, the baker and the grocer”.

Well, a supermarket boss would say that, wouldn’t he, when his out-of-town store offers the butcher, the baker, the grocer and much, much more under one roof with acres of free parking outside?

His comments will not go down well with small shopkeepers struggling to survive against the relentless decline of the town centre, where more than one in seven shops stands empty.

There will be some words of comfort from King, who does not believe the high street is doomed. Rather, he believes that it can be shrunk, with the excess space put to other uses.

There is evidence this is already happening. In east London, for example, a council is planning to convert a Woolworths store, which has lain empty since the chain collapsed three years ago, into a classroom.

King’s prescription for the high street echoes some of the recommendations made by Mary Portas last year when she delivered her report on the demise of the nation’s town centres. The retail guru’s vision for the high street is one filled not just with shops but with market stalls, creches, gyms, churches and schools.

Not everyone is convinced there is a future for the high street. In a speech at Oxford University earlier this month, retailer Phil Wrigley, the former New Look boss who now chairs Majestic Wine, likened town centres to the shipbuilding industry – “irrelevant” to today’s requirements.

Dismissing the Portas report as having the “right diagnosis but the wrong prescription”, Wrigley said the high street was in a “death spiral” and there was little the government or anyone else could do about it. The sooner we faced up to this, the sooner we could do something about it, such as turning the blighted areas into residential developments.

Even Portas has accepted that some of Britain’s high streets are too far gone to be rescued. In the meantime, a dozen town centres will be given the chance to become “Portas Pilots”, sharing a £1 million (€1.19 million) grant from the government to put towards revitalisation. The 12 lucky winners will be awarded a “golden ticket” to spend on their revamp plans. For the rest of Britain’s high streets, unfortunately, there is no golden ticket for survival.

DO THE British have the weakest necks in Europe? It would certainly seem that way as the nation appears to be in the grip of an epidemic of whiplash claims, now running at the astonishing rate of 1,500 a day.

Such are the concerns about the spiralling claims – which are costing £2 billion a year and have added about £90 to the average motor policy premium – that British prime minister David Cameron has intervened, vowing to clamp down on the “compensation culture”.

Cameron met insurance industry leaders at Downing Street yesterday for discussions on how such claims can be reduced. Whiplash is notoriously difficult to prove – or disprove – and there is little doubt that many of the claims are bogus. It takes a dishonest policyholder to make a false claim but many are encouraged in this by legal firms, which receive personal injury details from the very insurance companies that are complaining about the mounting cost of claims. The law firms pay fees in return for the contact details and then encourage drivers to claim, cold-calling them or sending them text messages.

A whole industry has sprung up on the back of this. Type “whiplash” and “compensation” into Google, and you’ll find details of dozens of firms eager to pursue a claim. Legislation to ban referral fees relating to personal injury claims is going through parliament but there are calls for a complete ban on the buying and selling of customer information.

Other proposals discussed at Number 10 yesterday included the use of “black box” technology to monitor young drivers, who have the most accidents.

But a clampdown on referral fees is likely to play the biggest part in curing Britain’s weak-neck epidemic.

Fiona Walsh writes for the Guardiannewspaper in London