Guildford upper High Street empty shops

Keith Parkins
Travel Writers
Published in
2 min readNov 30, 2021
Guildford upper High Street somewhat perverse Experience Guildford fly post empty shops to highlight empty
Guildford upper High Street somewhat perverse Experience Guildford fly post empty shops to highlight empty

A continuation of last week in the High Street, photograph the empty shops in the upper High Street.

This is not at the level of Aldershot, but no other town centre I have visited has this number of empty shops. It only serves to highlight the failure of Experience Guildford and why it must be wound up.

I only noted from Jeffries Passage upwards. The upper High Street where I rarely venture, I did not count, found as many empty shops as North Street.

What can only be described as perverse, Experience Guildford fly post many of the shop windows of the empty shops to highlight the scale of retail devastation.

Experience Guildford and Town Rangers hide behind a faded red door in Tunsgate.

What must be a very rare sighting, as Town Rangers are very rarely seen, a Town Ranger was spotted mid-afternoon in Tunsgate headed for the faded red door. If spot one, please take a photo of a rare sighting and post on social media.

If Experience Guildford is not wound up, which is the preferred scenario, then there must be reform, board removed, senior management fired, town rangers fired, and one vote one business.

Are the local community aware Experience Guildford place a levy on every local business in the town centre, a levy in today’s harsh retail environment which local businesses can ill afford, a levy for which they see no return? Are the local community aware of how votes are distributed based on rateable value, corporate chains have more votes even though they have no interest in Guildford other than the wealth they suck out of the town centre? This is like a rigged election in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, fair elections are held, only Putin decides who the candidates will be. Should HSBC have a seat on the board when they finance fossil fuel companies which is contrary to the declaration of Guildford as a green borough?

Not recorded last week, empty shops in Swan Lane.

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Keith Parkins
Travel Writers

Writer, thinker, deep ecologist, social commentator, activist, enjoys music, literature and good food.