Wincanton's high street, and the case for keeping it independent

OnePlanet Wincanton, a local group working on sustainability and community issues, states that 95 per cent of Wincanton's high street shops are independently run. I have not seen a methodology behind that figure, so treat it as an estimate rather than an audited count, but it matches what the wider description of the town's shopping offer suggests: a high street built almost entirely out of independent businesses, with the bigger names, a supermarket among them, sitting outside the centre rather than on it.

That is unusual. Most market towns of Wincanton's size have at least a handful of national chains anchoring the high street itself. Understanding why that has not happened here, and what it costs, is more useful than simply noting it.

Why it matters beyond the pleasant description

An independent-heavy high street is not automatically a healthy one. It can equally mean that the units are too small, too awkwardly shaped, or too poorly connected for a chain to want them, which is a less flattering explanation for the same statistic.

What actually determines which version is true is whether independents are choosing to be there or filling a gap nobody else wants. I wrote in 2017 about signs that the town was starting to draw people in on its own terms, off the back of a good bakery and a handful of new arrivals. Whether that has become a settled pattern rather than a moment is the honest open question nine years later, and it is not one I can answer from outside.

What independence actually buys a shopper

Setting the debate about cause aside, the practical effect of a high street like this is real. Money spent with an independent circulates locally in a way a chain's does not: wages, suppliers and rent are more likely to stay in the area. Prices are set by the shop rather than by a head office elsewhere, for better and worse. And the range on offer reflects what the traders themselves have decided is worth stocking, rather than what a national buying team has decided suits every branch equally.

None of that is a reason to romanticise it. An independent high street still has to compete on the same basics as anywhere else: being easy to find, being open when people expect it to be, and being specific about what it actually offers rather than relying on goodwill towards small business in general. Wincanton's shops get no pass on that just because there is no Boots next door.