By Community Correspondent Kevin Thomas “Rents across the UK’s high streets and shopping centres are set to drop by almost a fifth between now and the end of the year, quashing hopes of a revival of the troubled retail property sector, an influential property report forecast. Struggling retailers demand cheaper deals from the landlords”, as written in the Financial Times by Daniel Thomas.

Once again a fine job with the display of the Croydon Fashion Festival. My only issue was that a great window of opportunity was missed here.

We are facing a bleak time in the economy and the retail industry are suffering there worst spell in trade for some years.

My idea of utilizing the resources at hand may seem obvious but I rather think the finger on the pulse was misdirected at the bravado of creating a razzmatazz of days to PR a yearly presentation.

I wanted to see a positive move to show that we are all clubbing together to try and slowly put energy back into the flagging retail trade.

The idea of holding a yearly fashion market place just doesn’t cut it for me. We need to see a course of action that is measureable by success. What could be done?

Well the consolidation of the retail Business shops Landlord and the organisation of Croydon BID / Enterprise. Creating an incentive born from the Croydon Fashion Festival in which a shop unit could be donated as part of a project to let budding fashion designers who want to get the opportunity to start a boutique fashion line by sharing the cost of renting between each other and sharing the cost of running a retail fashion store.

Every year when the Croydon Fashion Festival presents its extravaganza, reference to the progress of these project stores could be highlighted.

This will generate positive feedback of business of new starters and also help the business shop landlords.

I would like to see a better response from Croydon Business, BID and Enterprise to do something more beneficial other than the usual easy way out to justify participation by getting people to tick the boxes and were you satisfied surveys?