The UK 'ghost town' where the high street's been abandoned to criminals and druggies

A city once billed as the future face of British culture now stands as a warning to the rest of the country, with boarded-up shops, widespread retail closures and a rising tide of street-level crime. Bradford, named the UK's City of Culture for 2025, now has one of the highest rates of vacant retail properties anywhere in Britain, with more than twice as many empty units as cities like London and Cambridge, according to a new think tank report.

Shuttered stores, "To Let" signs and entire streets deserted by shoppers now dominate the West Yorkshire city centre, fuelling accusations that council bosses have allowed the area to fall into terminal decline. Residents and traders alike describe a retail environment choked by betting shops, vape stores and fast-food outlets - with drug use and antisocial behaviour now a routine part of everyday life in the once-bustling heart of the city. John Henry Brown, 69, a lifelong Bradford resident, said: "The state of the place now is atrocious.

He told MailOnline: "They've blocked so many roads off it's stopped a lot of disabled people getting into town on the bus. Yet they're calling it the City of Culture. Where is the culture? It's just c**p."

The local council has pinned its hopes on a multi-million-pound regeneration project centred around the new Darley Street market, which officially opened this week. The scheme includes plans to demolish the ageing Oastler and Kirkgate centres, as well as building 1,000 new homes.

However, scepticism runs deep among locals, with many viewing the revamp as too little, too late.

Sophie Webster, 29, said that shops in Broadway "will only be open for a few months or a year and then close," adding her favourite one - Dunkin' Doughnuts - shut without warning.

Bradford's Broadway development, once heralded as a retail revival, has seen flagship brands like Marks & Spencer and Debenhams disappear in recent years. The city centre has lost dozens of high street names, with locals now travelling to nearby Leeds or Harrogate to do their shopping.

Long-standing businesses are also folding under pressure from online competition and relentless rent costs.

Abdul Pandor, 70, who has traded in Kirkgate for 15 years, said Bradford was "busy 15 years ago" but added "now we're dead."

Others pointed to a visible rise in public drug use and intimidation in the city centre as a key factor driving footfall away.

Josephine Eastwood, a local shopper, said the smell of drugs is putting people off, saying "it's the smell".

Despite the fanfare around the new market, residents say the broader picture remains bleak.

Councillor Alex Ross-Shaw, Bradford Council's Portfolio Holder for Regeneration, Transport and Planning, said: "We were ahead of the curve in realising that retail won't need as much space in city centres and we started remodelling our city centre in preparation for this seismic shift many years ago.

"We recognised some time ago that fixing the high street means transforming the economy, which is why we are investing in a blend of cultural interventions, like Bradford Live and UK City of Culture, alongside more business-focused actions such as the One City Park development and improving transport links through better rail connectivity and mass transit.

"In the future, city centres are going to be about more than retail; they'll be a mix of leisure, housing, commercial space and education. We're already seeing this come to life in Bradford with the new, fully-let, Darley Street Market. The old markets have now closed and are being prepared for redevelopment into housing as part of our visionary City Village development, which will drastically reduce the amount of old, outdated retail space in the city centre and replace it with new, fit for purpose public spaces, businesses and housing."