How town's booming high street is bucking the national retail trend

Otley will soon mark its 800th anniversary, and is bucking the national trend by breathing new life into its old cobbled streets.

- by Charles Brown

In an era of fear for the future of high streets, some 75 per cent of its shops are independent, compared with 61 per cent nationwide.

The ground-floor vacancy rate, measuring empty stores, is also two per cent lower at seven per cent.

And on a weekend, footfall is said to be at a record high.

To Mayor Paul Carter, who chairs the town council's trade and tourism committee, there is no "secret ingredient". It's "marginal gains", he said, that make it work.

A strong events calendar with carnivals and fayres, shops you won't find elsewhere, free parking, a picturesque setting, and a strong sense of identity.

There's a town crier, a carnival, a Victorian Fayre. It even has its own Christmas advert.