Guest blog by Jeremy Rucker, City Dressing
City Dressing has been following the news articles on converting derelict retail into homes. The majority of the public agree it would help reduce the pressure on our housing stock and increase footfall on the high street. Seasoned campaigners rally against it as being another death knoll of the high street and councils fear it would reduce business rates. At City Dressing we believe a single approach is not relevant and it is vital for every district to test out the viability of this idea. To this end we have launched a new virtual home service that can convert a shop into a house using virtual graphics and garner the reaction from the local community.
This will help support the notion of a flexible high street that can expand housing stock, office stock and retail stock to reflect the needs of the local residents. The costs of converting shops to houses will be a natural barrier whilst converting offices to shops and back again could make more sense. The barriers to overcome are planning and rates and this is what the government is trying to look at.
