More than 20 stores are closing every day according to research from PwC/Local Data Company. Much of the blame is falling on the government’s austerity measures that are squeezing incomes across the UK. However, this seems over-simplistic when there are two additional factors at work.

Firstly, the boom years created a surfeit of shops, arguably as many as 10 to 15 per cent more than shoppers ‘need’.

Secondly, UK planning has been unsympathetic to local independent stores for years, favouring the larger chains. As a result, we have ended up with homogenous town centres. Now, as the tide of consumer spend has turned, these stores are pulling down their shutters and many high streets are being left high and dry.

Mary Portas has been installed as the high street Czar to tackle the problem, following her success with revitalising small shops. But even she must privately fear that against outmoded planning laws and landlords who have only known upward rents for a decade or more she will not be able to work her magic fast enough to halt the decline.

Set against this gloomy picture, however, is the opening in mid September 2011 of the new Westfield shopping centre in Stratford City.

Having recently heard Westfield’s development director address town centre executives and traders at the Ilford BID conference, it is clear that their lettings are well on track. It is hoped that the ‘Westfield effect’ will ripple across Ilford and east London in the way that it has in west London. Here its White City / Shepherds Bush development has created hundreds of new jobs and contributed to the regeneration of the area.

But a number of conditions will need to be in place to achieve a positive ripple as two examples – Uxbridge Road and Ealing town centre – illustrate.

Uxbridge Road begins on Westfield’s doorstep and extends west out through Acton to Ealing and beyond. The section of Uxbridge Road by Westfield, in the heart of W12, was not that long ago championed by the New Economics Foundation as the country’s most diverse high street. But the Westfield effect has been detrimental to trade. Its arrival prompted the council to change the parking regulations in the borough so now off-street kerb parking is almost impossible. Customers who may once have stopped to buy from the myriad of Middle East and Afro-Caribbean stores are deterred by the punitive parking restrictions, bus lanes and lack of parking availability.

But go further west along the Uxbridge Road and there’s another story unfolding in Ealing. For so long a faded suburb, Ealing town centre has turned itself around and part of that success was due to Westfield according to speakers from Ealing at the Ilford BID conference.

The town centre got to grips with voids in its main shopping mall and on the Broadway through a highly effective Business Improvement District. The driver for the BID was the fear of what Westfield might do to Ealing and it galvanized the town into action. Planners, landlords, traders and community stakeholders have worked together over the last 4-5 years to re-establish an identity for Ealing and develop a strategy that it could take to market. Now that Ealing is getting back on its feet – it was bold enough to exhibit at this year’s MIPIM – Legal and General which owns the mall has put it on the market. It is estimated to achieve a yield of six per cent.

Retail analysts always say there are winners and losers on the high street, and that retailers with strong propositions flourish. That’s naive. Much more fundamental things need to happen to give retailers a chance. That includes a shake-up in the way high streets are designed and  marketed, greater co-operation and understanding between public-private enterprise and a favourable planning department, otherwise there will be more many losers than there are winners.