Six signs that a town's businesses are pulling together

Picture two towns of the same size, with the same rents and roughly the same number of people passing through. One has a waiting list for its empty shops. The other has three shops boarded up and a WhatsApp group full of complaints about parking.

People usually blame the number of shoppers, the council or the rents, but just as often the difference lies in how the businesses behave towards each other. Towns that work share six habits, and none of them depends on the rents or on how pretty the high street is. These six signs tell you which kind of town you're in.

1. Someone welcomes the new shop in its first week. They tell the owner which suppliers are reliable and which nights are dead. In the other town, newcomers are watched for six months to see whether they last, and by then they've decided the place is cold.
2. Competitors speak. Two cafés that talk cover each other's shortages and pass on the weekend overflow. Two that don't end up cutting prices until neither makes any money, which is a waste when there are better places for an independent to compete.
3. The unpaid work is shared. Every town has somebody who chases the council, books the hall and answers the emails. In the struggling town that's one person, close to giving up. In the working one it's three or four, with an obvious way for a fifth to join in. In some towns, the businesses go further and vote to pay into a partnership that does some of it.
4. Things get finished. A trail map actually gets printed, and a late opening happens a second time. Struggling towns are never short of plans; what they're short of is finished ones.
5. People admit to a bad month. Somebody says out loud that Tuesdays are dead, or that the new parking charge cost them. Once it's said, a private worry becomes a case someone can take to the council. Where nobody admits it, everyone assumes they're the only one struggling.
6. There is one reason to come. It might be a market, a gallery, a run of good food or a specialism that grew up by accident. Castle Cary has its Tuesday market, and Bruton has its gallery. Towns without one end up fighting their neighbours for the same fixed pot of local spending, and it's a miserable fight.

Most towns are strong on three or four of these and hollow on the rest, and a handful of people prepared to see something small through can usually fix the hollow ones. Start with the fourth, because one small thing finished builds more confidence than five big things announced.

Some handsome high streets are dying quietly. Some plain ones are full of businesses doing perfectly well, because the people in them talk to each other.

If your business is in Surrey or Somerset, our area pages list the local organisations and calendars that can help.