There is a lot to be said for what Mary Portas is recommending in her new report on the future of the High Street as a place to shop in our towns and cities. In fact, she sounds as if she has been a regular T&A reader for some years!

For a long time in this column we have been calling for a cultural regeneration of the city centre to go hand in hand with the physical reconstruction, more social activities to bring people in, a city centre sports and leisure centre, a swimming pool and other facilities. On more than one occasion, we have suggested that Centenary Square should be a weekly home for an open-air market stuffed with candy-striped canopies, like the successful ones in places such as Norwich and York.

One of the biggest issues hindering city centre trade in Bradford is getting people on to the High Street in the first place and one of the key factors there is providing places for people to park (as well as improving road access and public transport).

It makes perfect sense to make car parking cheaper and have more spaces available when shops are struggling. That is also something we have frequently called for, suggesting using part of the proposed Westfield development and the Odeon site as short term free central car parks. This would at least make practical use of these locations while we wait for their development and it would surely help bring more footfall into the city centre.

But how does Mary Portas’s focus on improving parking chime with Bradford Council’s current moves to scrap free on-street parking in a number of towns in the district? And how do we solve issues like Forster Square, which is essentially an out-of-town shopping centre right next to the city centre but with extremely difficult access to the city centre itself and a policy of clamping any car that dares to park there for more than two hours, effectively encouraging shoppers to fill their car boots and leave without ever venturing into the traditional retail heart of Bradford?

Mary Portas, by no means, has all the answers and there are many issues that can’t be solved simply by adopting her 28 recommendations. But it is all about footfall, and she offers a great deal of common sense advice that Bradford would do well to adopt.