UK town full of abandoned shops has sex sold on high street | UK | News

The decline you encounter when you walk down Chatham High Street at lunchtime is so sharp and inevitable that it feels more like a warning than a city centre.

Here you can see what happens when budgets tighten, businesses collapse and the streets are emptied, leaving only one merchant still reliably profitable in view of shoppers.

Just five minutes from the railway station, where trains carry passengers into central London in just over half an hour, the High Street stands out almost immediately.

Graffiti is plastered on the walls, shops are boarded up, vagrancy is rampant, and daytime drinking is on full display. Just a few meters away from the station, two men drink cheap cider from cans and throw the empties into the middle of the pavement.

Then there is a scene that no thriving town would ever accept as normal. Two sex workers standing on the busiest part of the sidewalk are openly touting business. They’re not hidden in side streets or near taxi ranks, but here, in the middle of the High Street, next to families shopping.

One local woman tells the Express they are simply “always there”.

The picture is bleak, but it only takes a few minutes to understand why.

Shops closed and foot traffic decreased. As customers’ incomes decreased, rates rose, leaving less to spend over the counter. And the Autumn Budget, scheduled for November 26, looms over this exhausted part of Kent like another storm cloud waiting to break.

Tax rises are widely expected and while the Treasury has not commented on Budget speculation, no one here is waiting to see what will happen because they are afraid of what they already know.

It’s a pattern repeated across the country, but perhaps nowhere is it repeated more vividly or clearly than in Chatham.

Once a proud town with a bustling commercial centre, the High Street now looks like a place slowly slipping out of the national conversation. Businesses here are talking about survival, not growth. They mutter about fewer staff and lost trade and despair about a town on the frontier.

And in almost every store you step into, the story is the same.

Halfway down the High Street, past the first of the paneled shop windows, is TV World Ltd. It operates here and its owner, David Frais, 61, has remained behind the counter through nine Prime Ministers, a recession, a pandemic and several rounds of high street “regeneration” plans that promised change and delivered little results.

Polite but clearly angry. His shop, once busy enough to employ a team of 11, now appears to have survived. A single customer browses a collection of the latest TV sets as boxes of appliances sit neatly stacked behind the counter. But behind the careful presentation lies a devastating truth.

“We fell £60,000 on our turnover in the first six months of this year,” he told the Express. “The high street, what’s left of it, took a big hit in the last budget. Reeves putting in National Insurance and the minimum wage led to redundancies. I used to have 11 staff here, now I have four.”

There’s no hesitation in his voice, just disappointment. “When Labor came in they basically doubled business rates,” he says. “Reeves is sleepwalking on spending.”

At no point does he soften his words. “He runs the country like an amateur,” he says. “The workmanship is disgraceful.”

According to Mr. Frais, fear is very practical. If the budget increases taxes again, margins will fall even further. Customers already have less money in their pockets. The town’s decline means passersby no longer linger. He says the High Street can’t afford another blow.

“This will be the worst Christmas in history,” he predicts. “Not all of us on the street are happy. Everyone is suffering.”

A few doors down is Pet Aqua, owned by 53-year-old Simon Ball, another business that has survived more than three decades on this increasingly fragile street.

When we arrive, he is serving a customer who is choosing insects for his pet lizard. The store is brightly lit and spotlessly clean and Mr. Ball was proud to show us around the store.

But the pressure is clearly there, hidden just below the surface. “When Labor came to power they promised to cut business rates,” he says. “But they doubled them.”

“We had trouble with tax increases,” he explains. Like Mr Frais, he lists the same culprits: National Insurance changes, higher costs and customers fed up with Income Tax.

“Shops are going out of business on the high street because of the increase in insurance,” he says. He pauses when asked about his perspective on politicians. “Politicians? They’re all as bad as each other.”

He says this not with anger, but as someone worn out from seeing one set of words replaced by another over the years.

Outside, the atmosphere oscillates between tense and tired. As they continue walking down the High Street, a fight breaks out between two women and a man. The man throws an empty box towards them and shouts a series of words that cannot be printed on this website.

Women shout the same way. They then told us that he “did not agree to pay”.

Noon. Mothers push strollers down the road, one appears to be expertly handling the stroller, two dogs and a child struggle with a balloon. He crosses the road and takes his family away from the scene.

This is Chatham’s new reality. The only trade that seems to be growing is one that most towns would rather pretend doesn’t exist. And if the sex workers don’t shock the patrons, the casual drinking, shouting, aggressive begging and shuttered shops on the street certainly do.

Residents talk about avoiding the High Street after school hours. An elderly couple tells us that they “left before school started” because things “got worse” in the afternoon.

The meaning of this is unfortunately clear; This is a town crushed under the weight of many problems at once.

At the far end of Main Street sits Cleopatra’s Hair Salon, as if sentinel to the street’s last reservoir of optimism. Inside, owner Desiree Nurse, 51, greets customers with a warmth that feels almost eerie after walking down the street.

Her shop is beautifully kept and also doubles as a small community center providing hair services, mastectomy support for cancer patients, and free health checks. In a street carved out by closed streets, Cleopatra feels like a sanctuary.

But Miss Nurse is under no illusions about what is happening outside her door.

“What we need is more support for the high street,” he says. “Money for security on the high street, like more police.”

He is measured in his comments and does not rule out higher taxes.

“Taxes pay for everything,” he says. “But they need to be proportional to your earnings. But it would help if small business rates were kept low.” Their views on employment costs are unclear. “High employer NICs really hurt.”

He doesn’t shout or complain. But his words carry the weight of experience gained from years of working on the other side of town. His business is one of the few still standing and he can see the decline happening in real time.

The more you walk, the more it becomes clear that Chatham is not a place in sudden crisis, but a place worn down by years of slow decline. The facades covered with panels are not temporary, and even the “For Rent” signs are faded.

Unfortunately, day drinkers are also part of this landscape, and sex workers are also part of it. Noise, interruptions, occasional shouting; these are no longer anomalies, but features.

This is what happens when a High Street loses its heart. The remaining businesses look like pauses in a long retreat, and over them looms the Autumn Budget, a date spoken of with a sense of dread on Chatham High Street.

Traders here fear that further increases in business costs or employer taxes will negatively impact them again, at a time when their customers cannot afford it. Many believe they are already operating at the limit and further tightening could shake them up.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking part of Chatham’s decline is the sense of inevitability. People here are not waiting to be saved, they are just waiting for more oppression.

“Chatham doesn’t need to take any more hits,” Mr. Frais says. “[Labour] I have no idea how to run the country.” The comments reflect the genuine feeling of someone who continues to resist while watching his streets deteriorate every year.

This is a town that many locals remember as a place where shoppers from all over the county would visit one day. Now the High Street has become a corridor of closures, poverty and a despair that never goes away.

What remains are the people who hold on stoically, the tradesmen who open every morning with the love of what they do and the desire to continue.

Small businesses that continue to provide help, support and service even when their own costs are beyond reason. They’re the ones who keep the lights on. But even they aren’t sure how much longer they can manage.

Everyone we talk to repeats the same sentence: ‘Everyone is suffering’.

And if Chatham is any indication of Britain’s future, the question is no longer whether the High Street will fall, but how much further it can fall.