I remember watching a video of retail tycoon Mike Ashley at a UK Parliament Select Committee hearing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn3p7by5F0I

A lot of what he said about the root causes of why UK high streets were dying seems to have been accurate, and this is before the double whammy of the Covid pandemic and the increase in interest rates to tackle inflation (as well as the mini-budget crisis of 2022), plus energy prices for shops and pubs in the UK are really high.

Retail parks are so popular in the UK because being able to visit a couple of stores in the park and do your shopping in one hit, plus the cheap/free parking, and that is ultimately what UK shoppers want - convenience.

If councils want to rescue their high streets, they may have to get more creative when it comes to getting new stores to open, beyond just offering a respite on business rates.