High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill
Friday 26th January 2024
(10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
They say that first impressions count. Often for our towns, the first impression that visitors will consciously draw is of the high street. Certainly, it is the high street that most often leaves the lasting impression of what a town is all about. It is key to the town’s character.
Strikingly, 72% of British adults surveyed by Nationwide Building Society went as far as saying that they judged the vitality of an area as a whole based on the high street alone. Some high streets are beautiful and thriving places, and there will be lessons to learn from them, but even some of those will be struggling against retail trends, not least in banking. That was the point of Nationwide’s survey, because it makes much of its commitment to maintaining a local branch network. Its marketing strategy is an informed one: 71% of people told Nationwide that they still feel that their own local high street is an important part of the community. However, 67% said that theirs had declined, with 62% saying that it had been neglected; 54% said that their high street has insufficient variety, and only 38% said that their local high street adequately fulfils their shopping requirements. More than a fifth—21%—would go as far as describing their local high street as a generally unpleasant place in which to shop. That is deeply disappointing, not least because these findings are from a January 2020 survey, almost immediately prior to the covid lockdowns and all the challenges that have come since, including post-pandemic inflation and Putin’s illegal war against Ukraine.
However disappointing the findings, they will not come as any great surprise to Members across the House. The state of our high streets is an issue that exercises us all, and is regularly raised by our constituents following the incessant move online and out of town. None the less, it will depress us all that the single most common word chosen to describe local high streets —and the only word picked by more than a fifth of respondents—was “sad”. The second-place word was “bleak”. This is not presented as a word cloud, but it is easily imaginable as one. The third most common word chosen by respondents when describing their local high street was “indifferent”. That is clearly not where we want to be, because the unique and localised character of our high street plays such a key role in defining the vitality of the surrounding wider communities. Nor does it give confidence to those wanting to visit or thinking of investing in our high street.
Fortunately, the survey results were not just a list of gripes. The survey went on to ask what people thought could be done constructively to improve things for the high street. The five key improvements that people want are: fewer empty shops, more big-name shops, more greenery, less litter, and better decorated shopfronts and signs.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I certainly recognise the picture that the hon. Member is painting. In Bristol we have 47 high streets and local centres. Some are thriving, but it has been very difficult to revitalise others. Bristol City Council has been very active, and some of the things he mentioned are within the council’s control, but others are down to the market. On addressing the empty shops, will he talk about what tools councils could use that would not cost huge amounts of money, to ensure that high streets can thrive in the way he would like?
Jack Brereton
I agree entirely that this is not just about local authorities. They play an integral and important role, but there are multiple stakeholders and partners —communities, businesses and property owners—that also play an important role. The importance of the Bill is in providing vision and focus through local authorities bringing together people and stakeholders in our high streets to come up with a plan of action to deal with some of these issues.
We must always pause to wonder whether a list of apparently quick and easy wins is indeed quick, easy and affordable to deliver. “Easier said than done” is often the narrative, but I fear that this has become an excuse for those who are avoiding taking difficult decisions and necessary action. Many of our high streets—for example, Market Street in Longton, a once bustling high street with many heritage buildings of iconic character—are now in a sorry state. Many owners are absent and take little or no responsibility for their property, in some cases deliberately allowing it to become derelict. I recently uncovered the fact that, shockingly, in the last 12 months, Stoke-on-Trent City Council has not issued a single section 215 enforcement notice against property owners who fail to maintain their properties. It is clear that action is needed.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. His Bill would require local authorities to designate at least one and up to three high streets. Does the definition of high street refer specifically to streets, or does it take in all the streets in the wider town centre area?
Jack Brereton
I will explain some of that shortly, but the Bill focuses on the core retail centre that is seen in many of our town centres, which may be one or more streets—a collection of streets.
The purpose of the Bill is to place a duty on local government to pause to consider properly what can be done, and to develop an action plan that can be delivered and that will work toward getting our high streets back on track. Retailers and big-name shops will come only where there is demand and the conditions are right—where footfall is generated and physical retail that is neither online nor out-of-town is de-risked. People still value high streets as a place for retail, but that alone cannot be the solution. They want the right mix of shops and leisure in the right public realm, with other attractions, such as a temporary events, to encourage footfall and dwell times. The mix needs to be got right for each high street.
The biggest risk that big-name stores will face is that of being accused by some of gentrifying a high street—quite possibly the same people who accuse them of betraying any high street they leave. Such is life, but we must not be daunted, because as we all saw in the news this week, the prize for getting it right could include the welcome return to the high street of Woolworths in its new iteration. I honestly do not think anyone could misconstrue the return of Woolies to the high street as gentrification —not without considerable bad faith, anyway. Plenty of us would champion its heartening reversal of decline. Sadly, the former Woolworths store in Longton in my constituency is in a very sorry state. The problem is not that it has not been reoccupied; it has been, but the occupiers after Woolworths have further neglected and detracted from the high street and now the store is empty again.
Most people are clear that they do not want high streets to be left in a spiral of decline, however “gritty” that makes them as urban spaces. They want the preservation of the historic fabric and character that a high street brings, alongside enhancements that make it relevant to the future and attract new and interesting uses. The reality of the decline of the former Woolworths in Longton is that the building has been raided more than once as a cannabis factory, with the raids taking place in a two-year period. At the time of the second closure in summer 2021, 1,500 cannabis plants were found and removed. Covid restrictions played a part in helping to conceal what was going on, and made people wary of going to our high streets, but even without covid, the building was a cannabis factory 22 months previously.
More recently, a boarded-up and abandoned takeaway on the other side of the road was raided for cannabis growing in the past eight weeks. That former takeaway has pointedly been reported in press coverage as being within sight of Longton police station. It is certainly my assertion that the police and crime prevention are key to preserving and enhancing the character of our high streets. Working alongside our excellent police, fire and crime commissioner for Staffordshire, Ben Adams, I have been delighted recently to secure safer streets funding, which will play a significant role in upgrading CCTV coverage in Longton, as well as enabling a number of other crime prevention measures such as gating off alleyways.
Our high streets need more footfall, not less, and more dwell time, not less. It is vital that people feel safe to visit. High streets need to be places in which people take pride and which they find pleasant to be in. The Bill is about bringing focus to our high streets, ensuring that local authorities think about the challenges they face and work with those who have an interest in our high streets to look at how we can begin to reverse their decline.
You will have noted, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I said, “Market Street” earlier, not “High Street”. At the risk of stating the obvious, my Bill is not intended merely to work from a list of those streets that are literally called, “High Street”. It seeks to require local authorities to designate a street as a high street for the purpose of the improvement plan. There is at least one designation, and up to three. Designations may be varied or withdrawn over time. It is not my intention that local authorities should be forced to designate an entire high street if one end is clearly different in nature—for example, residential—compared with the end of the street that is more traditionally for high street use. I make it clear that part of the intention is that adjoining streets can be included in the designated high street, or continuous streets with different names that form what is thought of locally as the high street.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his work on this. I am interested in the point that he made about the broader town-centre area. My experience is that many adjoining streets can benefit from this kind of measure and, indeed, neighbouring shopping centres. I urge him to look at that and be as flexible as possible, as there is a risk of displacement activity and concentrating on a small area. I hope that he has thought about that.
Jack Brereton
I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that important point. I agree entirely that the side streets that make up the high street are just as important, and we do not want to see displacement. We want the whole area to be lifted and improved so that it attracts new uses to fill those empty spaces.
Local government should make the designation according to local circumstances, as long as an area is important to the local economy because of a concentration of high street uses. It is further specified that it should not include streets where the importance is considered to be derived principally from goods or services purchased in the course of business. High street consumer retail, including hospitality, is part of what makes the totemic importance of our streets. Defining high streets to the letter is impossible, and we must recognise their evolving nature and the need to attract alternative uses, which may not be primarily retail.
The Bill is not prescriptive by design. For example, one option would be to legislate for the definition of high streets based on the definition used by the Office for National Statistics in its pioneering and experimental work with the Ordnance Survey to map the location and characteristics of high streets in Great Britain. According to that working definition, a high street consists of
“15 or more retail addresses within 150 metres.”
That dataset aims to bound retail clusters using street names, while aiming deliberately to exclude retail functions such as retail parks, industrial estates and isolated shopping centres. By that definition, there are 6,969 high streets in Great Britain, of which 6,136 are in England. In London alone, the Office for National Statistics and Ordnance Survey map shows 1,204 high streets. More importantly, the west midlands has 604, including the sweep of Market Street, Times Square, The Strand, which includes my constituency office, and the pedestrianised Exchange shopping centre in Longton. Interestingly, it also manages to capture that part of City Road in Fenton, also in my constituency, that is primarily retail in character, while excluding the part that is not.
I am drawing attention to the ONS data work and the demo map on the Ordnance Survey website, because it may prove to be a useful starting point for local authorities. It also, of course, helps me to make the point that local authorities do not have to work from scratch on this. There is no intention to place an onerous burden on local authorities; the intent is to get local authorities to become familiar with the data and more proactive about the best practice for the improvement of local high streets, in collaboration with all those who have an interest in making our high streets the best places to be.
I rejected specifying the ONS and Ordnance Survey definition in the Bill, partly because it encompasses so many streets within its definition, and to designate and draw up improvement plans for them all would be onerous. That task could be managed, however, with the stipulation that only up to three high streets per authority can be chosen. That said, I note that local authorities across England have designated nearly 10,000 conservation areas, so there may be room for greater possibility in the designations.
More fundamentally, the ONS and OS definition does not quite encompass what I would think of as a high street in parts of the country, including in my home city. But I stress that it is a great starting point for designating purposes and for the consultees on designations and improvement plans. As the ONS said in the 6 June 2019 article, “High streets in Great Britain”:
“The closure of branches of retailers across many high streets has led to worries about the decline of retail on the high street, and in turn anxiety about how high streets will develop in the future.”
In this context, it is important that good data on high streets are available to monitor the changes and inform policy responses. The article goes on to say:
“It should be noted that this high streets project is very much a work in progress.”
That is reiterated in the 10 August 2020 update, which says:
“We continue to develop our work which means that the data and results in this article are Experimental Statistics.”
At this experimental stage, it seems the right time to start a wider conversation with local government and local communities on which streets should be designated formally as high streets for the purpose of closer study, review and improvement plans. The requirement that at least one street be identified by each local authority ensures that every local authority will engage in this process, and the stipulation that only up to three can be designated at one time is designed to ensure that the task is not too onerous and is meaningful.
James Daly
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, but is the point of this Bill to support retail on the high street? If that is the point, what does he feel are the challenges from the internet and changes in the market? Does he believe that part of this regeneration is about bringing housing and people closer to the high street? Many towns will have reams and reams of offices and other spaces above the retail shops on the ground floor. We need to bring people closer to the high street in order to make it thrive.
Jack Brereton
I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent point. He is absolutely right. While retail is an important aspect of this work, and we hope that this Bill will improve the retail environment on our high streets, it cannot just be about retail. The world has moved on, with online and out-of-town retail, and with the pandemic, which means that we must encourage alternative uses, such as hospitality, leisure and residential. As he says, many of the spaces above shops just lie empty and dormant. If we can encourage residential and business use of those spaces, that will really add to the vibrancy and vitality of our high streets.
Kerry McCarthy
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent and very thorough speech. Does he share my concern that the whole concept of 15-minute cities has now been caught up in ridiculous conspiracy theories? What it is really about is the fact that we want people to be able to shop locally, to go out and enjoy leisure facilities locally, and not always to have to travel out of town or into the city centre. If we have thriving local communities, everyone can get what they need in their local community.
Jack Brereton
The hon. Lady makes an interesting point, but I would say that it varies from place to place. Across the country we have various types of high street, in towns small and large, so it varies depending on the nature of the area and whether it is urban or more rural. It would depend on that right across the country.
As I say, there will no doubt be considerable pressure to designate a large number of high streets from the beginning of this Bill becoming an Act, but I fear that it would prove overwhelming and we should safeguard against this. I say that with a certain trepidation, because there are six historic market towns in the modern city of Stoke-on-Trent. The idea of designating more than three high streets is tempting, because each town has a high street that could, and indeed should, be designated at some point in a rolling process of improvements across the city. I accept that this may prove something to revisit at later stages of the Bill.
The eagle-eyed in the House will have noticed that, for the purposes of the Bill, high street uses mirror those already legislated for in part 10 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. This encompasses a good range of what would ordinarily be seen as high street uses by the general public and does not specify an exact number of retail addresses within a certain distance, as attempted in the ONS’s experimental definition.
Members will be interested to know that the ONS discovered what it calls
“one notable geographic feature in England”
in what was otherwise a distribution of retail addresses on high streets across the whole of Great Britain that showed no clear pattern across the country. The English feature—this is germane to an English Bill—is that there are hub towns with a higher proportion of retail addresses on their high streets. Hub towns are those that are identified in the official rural-urban classification for England as being important hubs for the rural areas around them because they provide services, employment and businesses. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs includes towns like Stone and Cheadle, in north Staffordshire, in this category. There will be a need for improvement plans to be consulted on beyond the immediate town and rural areas that depend on high streets’ success in these hubs.
There is a great deal of data, and it is time for local authorities to use this to best effect and focus attention on preserving, enhancing and reviving our high streets. They should do this in concert with the communities they serve—both businesses and residential.
Matt Rodda
I wonder if the hon. Gentleman has considered the public transport implications of what he is saying, because he is making a very good point about hub towns and rural areas, and their connectivity to bigger towns or cities. In my county, one of the very important benefits we have is the existence of excellent bus services—Reading buses connect to neighbouring smaller towns—and I understand that there might be an issue in Staffordshire with the different level of bus provision. I wonder whether he would like to comment on the importance of public transport and its ability to help regenerate towns and cities.
Jack Brereton
I agree entirely that public transport is vital to many of our high streets and town centres, because connecting communities, whether urban or rural, is very important. In my area, the decline of bus services, which we have seen over a long period, particularly since the pandemic, has had an impact. I have been working to secure more investment into the area in order to address such issues, including through the bus service improvement plan funding, which has been vital in addressing that. In Stoke-on-Trent we have managed to secure £31 million of that funding, which will specifically address such issues. Across the country it is important to consider the impact of transport connections, whether bus, rail or other means, to town centres and high streets.
There are examples of work that is already underway and where such an approach has been taken under the high streets task force. There will be lessons for us all from those examples, including the warning that high streets will need to remain agile, which suggests that improvement plans need to avoid being overly prescriptive, as much as being non-existent. The task force has found that the most common recommendation it has needed to give for the development of a clear and compelling local vision is the need for “place activation”, alongside a compelling local vision and the requirement for more effective place marketing and branding.
In my own town of Longton we are starting to see things being turned around, thanks in particular to the proactive approach of Longton Exchange shopping centre, which has attracted new uses and new organisations such as Urban Wilderness, which is helping to develop a programme of creative activities and events. In addition, the levelling-up funding that we have secured is addressing sites such as the Crown Works, redeveloping that derelict Potteries site into new residential uses. I hope the Minister keeps his commitment to see Longton also benefit from levelling-up partnerships funding.
This issue is about more than just Government funding. As suggested by the high streets task force, such funding will not be enough to preserve high streets. As those of us with high streets in conservation areas already know, the requirement to preserve is insufficient to arrest and reverse deterioration. I was delighted that Market Street in Longton was included in the cross-city heritage action zone for the Potteries, which has subsequently matured into a partnership scheme in a conservation area. Although we have now started to see properties benefit from this grant scheme, it is frustrating that even with this dedicated national support from the Government and their heritage agencies, work on improving the street has none the less proved agonisingly slow. We had to contend with covid, of course, but even taking that into account is not enough to explain the delays.
It was surprising how little the city council knew about the owners of buildings that need repair and reoccupation, but also how blinkered it has proved to be about the severity of the danger than can sometimes be presented. One heritage building recently fell into the street and is still causing chaos, because an area of the street immediately before a major bus stop in the town centre has had to be fenced off. It is a wonder that no one was killed or injured. I had reported the building’s increasingly precarious condition to the city council several months before its collapse, and was not alone in doing so, and this is on a street where a Government scheme will make funding available to landlords to preserve and enhance heritage buildings and bring them back into use.
There is an urgent need to know much more about the physical state of our high streets and to liaise with owners and users to take things forward. Guidance and regulation from the Secretary of State are also important. I ask the House to note the role of Historic England, for example, in issuing guidance when designations and reviews of conservation areas are undertaken. I hope that the Office for Place, now based in Stoke-on-Trent, will have some role in this process, including for high streets.
It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the great deal of work by the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee on which we can usefully draw. The Government response of March 2022 to that Committee’s sixth report, “Supporting our high streets after COVID-19”, said:
“We want to create more vibrant, mixed use town centre areas which will attract people to shop, work and for leisure activities, ensuring they remain viable now and in the future. To do this we need a modernised and agile planning system—one which embraces digital technology, benefits communities and creates places in which people can take real pride.”
The result of that desire was the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act, to which this Bill is a natural progression and complement.
In their response, the Government draw attention to the various support schemes and initiatives that they have provided to assist with the vitality of our high streets. Indeed, there are initiatives from a number of Departments. We have seen the future high streets fund, the high streets heritage action zones and so on, but these funds require largely reactive plans to be brought forward, rather than the proactive improvement plans we need from local government that recognise the importance of high streets as beacons for their whole area. There is also a need to know more about those high streets and to have good working relationships with the owners of the buildings, in order to preserve and enhance those buildings.
It is incumbent on local authorities to get the basics right. Nearly all of the top things people wanted to see in the nationwide survey are, arguably, within the remit and powers of local authorities to deliver. Taking action on the quality of the public realm, with more greenery and less litter, along with appropriate design codes and enforcement against unsightly shopfronts, signs and street clutter, will help to fill empty shops. If it does not do so—say, where the landlord is particularly obstructive or unco-operative—there are now powers for rental auctions be to be required.
The Bill is about getting local authorities to use the powers that are now in place to get on top of the challenges and take action on the issues that are important to high street users or that bring in new uses, whether that involves the big names or the quirky and family-owned independent local businesses that people want to see. They should consider totally different new uses, such as creative and digital start-ups. To get this right, we need more than
“an exercise in dolling the place up with fresh paint that lasts about twelve months”,
which is how I have had one scheme—not in my constituency—described to me recently. In some instances, the local authority may need to get out of the way—for example, it could provide more flexibility by allowing more temporary event notices to be issued. However, without more detailed analysis than is usually in place, it will be hard to deliver the longer-term viability that we all want to see. A short-term, sticking-plaster approach frustrates us all, and it does not adequately achieve the Government’s own objectives.
With the Bill, we will see proactive reviews and improvement plans for high streets that get closer to the root causes of decline and bring forward the physical improvements and event programmes that are likely needed to activate places where feet will fall. I particularly want to thank the Minister for all his support and the Department for bringing forward the Bill. I stress to the Government the importance of implementing it as soon as possible. This is a Bill to reverse the decline of our high streets, and I commend it to the House.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
It is a pleasure not only to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), but to support him in his endeavours with his private Member’s Bill. I appreciate his eloquent and considered contribution this morning.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I am learning very quickly that, on private Members’ Bills Fridays, there is a collegiality in the House and a reciprocity in contributions, so I am very pleased to speak, recognising that I am doing so on a Bill that extends to England only. I did not want to intervene on the hon. Member to make this point, for fear of ruining his flow, but there is a wider point to make that extends beyond the scope of these days and beyond the constraints of money resolutions and so on: for as long as online retailers are paying significantly less in rates, tax and other burdens from Government than our high street retailers, we will not allow those high street retailers to flourish. When Marks & Spencer is paying in one year what Amazon pays in 20 years, we can see the challenges that are before those who wish to take the best aims of the hon. Member’s Bill and revitalise our high streets.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to give local authorities the ability to designate not just one high street but up to three high streets—high street areas that go beyond one street, to put it another way—for this purpose. I represent the city of Belfast and when I think of our high streets, I think of Donegall Place, Royal Avenue and Ann Street, all of which are within our city centre and constitute a high street. All have had challenges in the last decade or so.
The historical Primark building, an old bank, had a fire that effectively shut down the entire centre and its connecting roads for around three years. It is a heritage building that was being restored, and the fire had a cataclysmic effect on the economy, on trade and on people’s ability to meet and mingle in our city centre, so I entirely recognise the points that the hon. Gentleman makes.
In recognising what Belfast’s high streets have to offer, I should note that none of them is in my constituency. We need to recognise the neighbourhoods in our cities. The hon. Gentleman reflected on that within Stoke-on-Trent, where he can see six potential neighbourhoods that could constitute high street areas that should receive attention.
Some of the briefings in support of the Bill have quoted the Institute of Place Management and its co-chair, Professor Cathy Parker, who recognises that, in over 40% of the towns visited in pursuit of the high streets task force, there is no real partnership or governance to deliver the transformative change that our high streets need.
I declare my interest as a board member of EastSide Partnership, which does not touch on our town centre but is very much of east Belfast. As a partnership, it is solely focused on regeneration in all its forms. As a constituency MP, I am very proud of the partnership’s work and of the small and singular contributions that I and many others have made over the years.
James Daly
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent point. Whether or not it is through this Bill, meaningful regeneration can happen only if people have pride in the area they either live in or come from, and that generally comes from a knowledge or understanding of the area’s history and heritage. From his experience of being a board member, does he see that sense of history and heritage being used to drive regeneration in Belfast?
Gavin Robinson
I do. First we need pride, commitment, passion and knowledge of what went before and what we want to achieve in the future. I want to share the beauty of the partnership in bringing all those strands together. The partnership was born from the need to tackle social deprivation and has become regenerative, but not in the traditional sense of simple physical regeneration.
As a partnership, we support business improvement districts and traders’ associations. Around the corner from my constituency office, work is happening on Belmont Road, Ballyhackamore and Newtownards Road. As arterial routes in my constituency, they all get support for their endeavours to make the best of their immediate location.
Within the broader neighbourhood, a recreational space spanning 16 km throughout the constituency, across three rivers, ties people together in an environmentally sustainable way that brings them out to mix and mingle. The Hub is in an area that was full of dilapidation, dereliction and social deprivation, and that was the target of much difficulty during the troubles. It has been totally transformed as an amazing civic space that celebrates C. S. Lewis, a son of Belfast who was brought up in my constituency and is world-renowned for his ability to write and speak theologically, as well as for being a professor and an author. It is a beautiful space and something that has completely transformed the area, which includes the Holywood Arches, which we are hoping to regenerate for business purposes.
At the bottom of Newtownards Road, there is a brand-new shared space—the Bridges doctors surgery—which is attended across the peace divide and which brings communities together for not only health, but physical regeneration through capital building and social investment funds. That delivers, on a neighbourhood basis, on exactly the aims of the Bill through shared experience, commitment and partnership.
At the other end of the constituency, in Ballybeen, round the corner from where I live, there is the second largest social housing estate in all of Northern Ireland—one that was blighted by the troubles. Ballybeen Square itself was full of dereliction until the predecessor of my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), Mrs Iris Robinson, totally regenerated the space in conjunction with the EastSide Partnership. It was done in a way that was connected with the local community. It provides a business hub, brings in council services and provides other community services, and it has transformed that area.
It is that passion and pride we have in our area and our ability to draw on our past, recognising not only the difficulties there have been but the vision and potential to deliver for our local people, that provide the elements for success. The intervention is absolutely right, and the point to highlight is that there are too few partnerships. Some 40% of towns need regeneration, and the high streets need to be reinvigorated. We do not need another committee set up for the sake of it. We do not do this because the high streets task force asked us to; we do it because we believe in our area and want to see it improved.
I share all that because I want to support the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South on his Bill, which will help to crystallise in a productive way the opportunity to reinvigorate high streets.
Kerry McCarthy
I thank the hon. Member for giving way. I was interested to hear what he said about the importance of preserving the history and legacy of our communities. On one of the longest high streets in my constituency—Church Road—which goes into the neighbouring constituency of Bristol West, hidden behind a Wetherspoons that has just closed we have an almost pristine art deco cinema. It opened in 1912 and was where the first silent films were shown. It has now become an asset of community value. The community is trying to buy it to turn it into a community hub. There are other people who are interested in turning it into housing. Although we have a great need for housing, having that as a centrepiece would encourage people to flock to Church Road to see that historical asset. I support what he was saying, because shops and housing are important, but those assets are important too.
Gavin Robinson
I thank the hon. Lady for that contribution because it allows me to move from CS Lewis Square, up the Holywood Road towards St Mark’s Church in Dundela, Bunker Hill. That was C. S. Lewis’s church, and it has his communion cup, which was donated by the family. Smack bang in the middle is the old Strand Cinema, which is now the Strand Arts Centre. For eight years—actually, from before I was a Member of Parliament, so for 10 years—I have been banging my head against a brick wall in support of the Strand Cinema, which is a beautiful pre-war, art deco cinema. There used to be one screen, probably the size of this Chamber, and it has now been divided into four screens—the old balcony is a separate screen.
We just secured £4.09 million from the levelling-up fund for the full restoration of Strand Arts Centre. I say genuinely to the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) that if there is a connection we can make between the two—if we can share the plans and show exactly what they are doing and hoping to deliver in my constituency—I would be more than happy to share that with her.
All that comes through partnership, and it is the partnership element that I want to impress on the debate. I chair a subsidiary of our partnership, which is EastSide Tourism. It is all about encouraging people to visit east Belfast. When I was leader of our party group in the council, there was an opportunity to allocate £105 million for leisure transformation across the city. Through one political deal or another, I got £48 million of that for what is now my constituency. Part of that was used to restore the heritage baths in east Belfast, the old public baths where people used to go after a hard day or a week’s work in the shipyard. They have now been completely restored and integrated into an all-singing, all-dancing, state-of-the art leisure centre. You may remember the old slipper baths, Mr Deputy Speaker: there is only one tap, you get six inches of hot water, and you can put in as much cold as you like. If you want a long bath, it is going to be freezing.
That drawing together of a new, regenerative leisure facility and our old industrial past and heritage, through our tourism initiative and as part of the wider regenerative partnership within our neighbourhood, shows what can be achieved when we have the necessary passion, will and determination, recognising where we have been and where, as a community, we want to go. The Bill focuses, rightly, on high streets, but within our wider cities and spaces there are neighbourhoods and communities with a passionate desire to make their localities better than they are today, and that is what should lie at the heart of our aspirations for our cities.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I strongly welcome and support this Bill presented by my near neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) to improve our high streets. There are four micro market towns in my constituency and one large village, and we are well aware that, particularly in the case of big unitary authorities such as Cheshire East Council, development plans need to be made in close partnership with local people and local businesses, because they know their communities best. Councils such as Cheshire East need to listen to local people, and need to listen to them more.
In 2010, a campaign to prevent the car parking charges proposed by Cheshire East Council, under a different leadership, was successful because the then leadership recognised the detrimental effect that they would have on towns such as mine. Unfortunately, just yesterday, the current leadership implemented the charges. “Controversial” is not really the word to describe what has happened. There was opposition from more than 8,000 residents in the consultation. Of 8,384 representations, 8,127 were objections, 127 were neutral, and just 130 supported the proposals. Could anyone say that Cheshire East Council is really listening to local people?
That is why the Bill matters. I would describe Cheshire East Council in this respect as tin-eared. Its plans are short-sighted, and potentially detrimental to high streets throughout my constituency. Cheshire East Council may be under funding pressures, but this is not the way to resolve them. Mike Muldoon, a hard-working and committed Sandbach councillor, contacted me this week—not for the first time—to say that such proposals would have a potentially detrimental impact on small restaurants, publicans, welfare outlets such as chemists, opticians and hairdressers, and shops and local businesses that enjoy the footfall of local people who can currently pop in and out quickly from their towns. At a demonstration in Sandbach, Councillor Muldoon spoke powerfully on my behalf about how wrong the charges would be. They would penalise local people— residents who come to shop and use facilities in their own town. They would harm small businesses, the lifeblood of our local economies, and stifle rather than strengthen the community spirit as people stayed away from local groups and events. They are also wrong because they would exacerbate parking on local side streets, to the considerable inconvenience of householders living nearby. My hon. Friend’s Bill would help such issues to be handled in a considered and planned way, rather than through what looks like a knee-jerk reaction to raise funds off the back of local people, high street customers and businesses.
I fully support the proposals in the Bill to ensure that towns have a thought-through regeneration plan which is based on local people’s priorities and put to local people for consultations that are actually listened to and meaningful. Too many consultations are held simply to tick a box to say that a consultation has happened. That has to stop. I look to the Bill to ensure that it does not happen.
I hope the Bill will also ensure that local authorities listen to local communities on other matters of concern in my constituency. One such case involves Holmes Chapel. Over many years, the parish council has produced thoughtful proposals on how to deal with traffic pressures in the centre, which are among local residents’ biggest concerns. Over those many years, I have supported the parish council and residents, and I pay tribute to all those involved in developing those thoughtful plans. It is vital that principal authorities listen to such proposals; the Bill would promote that ethos and, I hope, result in a change of approach to the dialogue that needs to take place in such cases.
Holmes Chapel Parish Council has proposed to introduce traffic-calming measures such as roadway markings and gateway features, and lower speeds on London Road, which passes through the village centre, to make it a better place for shoppers and pedestrians, many of whom are elderly. I hope that the principal council officers and others will listen and now actually implement the proposals the parish council has been making for many years.
We need to make sure that our towns and high streets are accessible. My towns of Alsager, Congleton, Middlewich and Sandbach, and the large village of Holmes Chapel, are all thriving and have many independent local businesses. We want to keep them that way, and access to our community centres is essential. To ensure better access in Sandbach, a wonderful market town, a request has been made for a pedestrian crossing on The Hill. A main thoroughfare into the town, The Hill is a busy road containing a mixture of residential properties and shops. It was thought that a crossing was planned, but I am told by constituents—I pay particular tribute to Sarah Bradley for her campaign, although she is supported by many residents in the area—that that is no longer the case and section 106 funds may be directed elsewhere. I urge the council to think again.
Bank closures are another issue, and I strongly support the campaign of our hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines) to save our banks. Our local communities are being debanked, which is making it very hard for local people, especially those who are elderly and vulnerable, for charities and cash businesses to access the banking facilities they need. For example, Alsager in my constituency had two banks and two building societies but now has none. Let us ensure that we have a local voice supporting local banking.
We must ensure that towns such as Congleton remain vibrant, which is why my hon. Friend’s Bill is so important. I am sorry to hear that Boots is closing the Bridge Street branch in the centre of town, and is focusing just on the branch in the retail park outside the centre of town, which has free parking. I wonder whether the plan to close is in the light of the car parking charges that are being introduced.
I will end there and leave it to other colleagues, I hope, to support my hon. Friend’s Bill, which I very much support.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
If there is something that interests me—though not more than anything else—it is this issue. I am a firm believer that history, heritage and pride in an area are a central driver to regeneration. We can come up with all the policies in the world, but if those fundamentals are not there, there is failure. The emotional connection between the human being and where they live is central to our political life.
I am the very proud MP for Bury North, but I was brought up in another town in West Yorkshire that I will not name, which is part of my soul and who I am. People might ask, “How can that be?” but I am proud to say that. I will give hon. Members a clue: one of the reasons why I have been a season ticket holder at Huddersfield Town football club for many years is that it is a representation of an association with the pride, history and heritage of an area that means something to me. It was the first team to win the first division championship three times in a row in the 1920s.
As a young boy, when I shopped in the town where I was brought up, it was a place of wonderment. There were independent shops and it was thriving, full of cinemas and all sorts of other things. My heart bleeds now when I go there. I am not blaming anyone or trying to make a political point, but the centre is dying, and it never used to be like that. I wonder whether somehow we have lost the care and the feeling for a place.
In my own town of Bury we have secured levelling-up funding for the regeneration of the town centre. I have tried to persuade my local council that a building can be built in whatever shape, which might or might not be something, but people need to have an understanding of the history and how we have got here. I am asking my local authority to create signs, or something, that tell the story of Bury. A lot of people in Bury do not know their own story. If you do not know your own story, where are you going to go?
This is a really interesting debate, in which some interesting points have been put forward. My heart sank when the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) made the point about the art deco cinema. That is as important to regeneration as Marks and Spencer and Tesco. That is the thing that sparks people into life and gives that joint, collective, communal experience, where people go out, spend their money and invest in things.
My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) made a valid point about car parking charges—we could all discuss that separate issue for the rest of the debate. But the important thing is not that. I agree with every word that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) said. For the high street to be successful, the things around it have to be successful as well.
One of the things that I am proud of as a Member of Parliament is securing £1 million from the Minister’s Department to buy Gigg Lane in my constituency. When the issue was first raised about getting £1 million of taxpayers’ money to buy a football club, there was a bit of outrage. That football ground is the 12th oldest in the world, and it is less than a mile from the high street in the centre of Bury, but what does it do? It is the only place in Bury where 3,000 to 4,000 people come together every single fortnight. It is the ultimate footfall provider, and the costs and benefits for that million pounds involve not only how it makes people feel—Bury Football Club is back, as I am sure you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, and charging up through the league—but the preservation of a heritage asset. It brings people into the town centre to share experiences and to be interested in their town. It is an example of what we should do.
I was silently shouting when the hon. Member for Bristol East was talking. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister will say, “Community ownership fund, community ownership fund,” because that was the exact means for Gigg Lane, but I can give another example. The hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) made a point about the levelling-up fund, but the latest round of the community ownership fund, which is how Gigg Lane was preserved, was also used to save the Co-op Hall theatre on the main street in Ramsbottom, a town in my constituency. This theatre is unique—one of only three in the country. It is an original 1870s co-op theatre where people went not just to listen to concerts, but to attend an anatomy class, for example. Whatever they wanted to do, they could go in there and do it.
The theatre has been laying untouched for 60 years on the top floor of a building in Ramsbottom. Nobody knew about it. While I cannot recommend highly enough the coffee shops, bars and independent retailers in Ramsbottom, if someone needs a reason to go there, it is an intact 1870s co-op theatre, part of the history and heritage of the industrialisation of the town. That is what regeneration is about. We need to link these things into what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South has been talking about.
My constituency has the big town of Bury and the small town of Ramsbottom. We must face up to reality: without something dramatic in fiscal policy, the challenges for retail businesses in our high streets and towns compared with those for online businesses in terms of energy costs, rental costs—all those things—will prove too much for many businesses. We must think strongly about what our high streets will look like. I made this point to my hon. Friend, but we must find ways to make use of the empty buildings in town centres. In 2021, we introduced legislation—I think it was the class E regulations—to make it easier to turn shops and suchlike into residential property, and we must look at that. We cannot just have empty shops and empty spaces, because they present an opportunity for housing and regeneration to bring places back to life.
We have a free market economy—socialism hasn’t got us yet, Mr Deputy Speaker—and long may that be the case. The question is, “Can the state regenerate anything?” If it is our job to release the potential of individuals and towns and places, what do we do? As a Conservative, I believe in releasing burdens, whether that be taxation, regulation or whatever. That is what we do to allow people to make their own decisions, invest their own money, and regenerate high streets through their own endeavour and their passion for the area in which they live or to which they come. However, a hugely important part of this debate is this idea of heritage culture—tapping into something and thinking honestly about what the state can invest in that will get people off their settees, away from watching “Coronation Street”, away from all the other stuff, and motivate them to come and do something.
When we pontificate in this place, we forget that when people vote, they act upon emotion. People are not going to say that regeneration has happened. I put in a bid to the levelling-up fund in Bury for a flexi-hall. It is going to be great. But a flexi-hall is a flexi-hall—it is a building that hopefully we can do something with, and hopefully it inspires. But what really inspires is what my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East was talking about regarding the partnerships in Belfast and the theatre he mentioned. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) is about to speak, and I am sure he can give an example of that, as can the Minister. That is what matters, and that is how the Government can intervene. It is terribly unfashionable, but as chair of the northern culture all-party group, let us invest in things that inspire people, give them belief in their town and area, and give them shared collective experiences. If we as the Government and working cross-party can do that, those town centres will be regenerated.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly), and I agree with so much of what he has said and what other Members have said. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) on presenting this Bill to the House. His speech laid out in detail the issues and challenges that we face, and he is proving to be a vociferous champion for his high street.
British high streets should be vibrant hubs of commerce and community life, yet many are now facing unprecedented challenges in the wake of evolving consumer habits and economic shifts, particularly after the pandemic. Too many retail units lie boarded up, and the Bill recognises that reality and takes a proactive approach to try to breathe new life into some of those critical spaces, alongside other Government action. The Bill is not merely about preserving bricks and mortar structures; it is about preserving the beating heart of our communities. Too many businesses have closed their doors, and as a result jobs have gone too, affecting families and individuals.
Let me say a few words about the town centres and high streets of Crewe and Nantwich. Nantwich in my constituency would commonly be regarded as the more secure of the two, which is probably true. Even in Nantwich, however, we have seen more vacant units than we would like, and we cannot take the success of any of our high streets for granted. As my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) mentioned, recent changes confirmed yesterday will increase parking charges in Nantwich and Crewe, which is going in the wrong direction. The council will probably lose more money if our high streets are not successful, and we need to encourage greater use of them, not make that even harder or more expensive for people. Even in Nantwich we have challenges, but there is no doubt that my constituents are particularly concerned about our town centre and high streets in Crewe. The history is a long and sometimes tortuous story. First there was a decision to construct a retail park within walking distance. That has seen businesses move and customers make use of the free parking near the big chain stores that we find there. Secondly, there was an ambition to build a new leisure and retail unit in the heart of town.
James Daly
Again, I apologise if this is slightly controversial, but does my hon. Friend think that out-of-town retail parks are an absolute disaster? Because I do in terms of town centre regeneration. They serve no purpose, and the same product can be delivered in a much more harmonious and better way in towns where such shops have traditionally been.
Dr Mullan
We must recognise the jobs and investment that retail parks sometimes create, but there is no doubt that they lack on the added value we get when those retail units are placed in more diverse communities. Certainly, as I have seen in this case, there might be an argument for an out-of-town retail park, but to place a retail park immediately next to a high street and town centre has created enormous challenges for that town centre over the years. In part to try to rebalance that, the plan was to build a new retail leisure centre in the heart of town, right on our high street, but as others have mentioned, the definition of a high street can involve multiple streets that make up the high street, and we could also see a street further out nearer the train station as a local high street.
Unfortunately, that plan led to a long period of the town centre being a big boarded up space, then a demolished space. That dragged down the purpose and vibe of the town, which is not surprising. Unfortunately, market changes as that delay has dragged on have led ultimately to the decision not to proceed with that plan in the short term, and potentially never to proceed with it. At the same time, that allowed us to build a new car park and bus station, which will open this year and will help and benefit the whole town centre. But that leaves us with the pressing priority to make use of that now vacant and derelict space, as otherwise it will carry on dragging down the rest of the town centre. I hope we see rapid progress from the Labour-led council this year to get that space back into use.
The Minister will understand that when it comes to challenges facing Crewe’s retail sector and town centre it would be remiss of me not to mention the additional challenges that we face following the decision on HS2. That has always divided opinion in the House on its overall merits, but everyone would recognise that Crewe in particular would benefit from investment and regeneration. There are short-term challenges because of the accounting changes that need to be made. I have spoken repeatedly to the Government about that, and I am optimistic that we can find a solution. Going past that, we need additional investment so that Crewe can make up the loss, which we did not expect, on the back of the decision on HS2.
I do not want to be too negative, because there absolutely are positives for our high streets in Crewe. We have a £22.9 million town deal, and we have £14.1 million from the future high streets fund. Some of the things we will do with that money include a programme to get vacant units in Crewe back into use—exactly the kind of challenges we have been discussing—and landscaping work to make the journey in, around and to the town centre and its high streets easier. It will help to bring back into use buildings that are not smack on the high street—they might be slightly further out, such as the Flag Lane Baths community centre, which is coming on board, and a new boxing club on Mirion Street. All those things encourage people to come into town, and to the high streets. That creates footfall, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North said. We have a football club in Crewe which, as he said of his football club, brings a lot of people into the town. We have started to construct a history centre, which will provide additional public space.
All those things are positive, but we must do more. The Bill seeks to do something different to tackle the crisis. I have worked closely as part of the town board with Cheshire East local authority, and I have seen the benefits of an engaged local authority—we do not see that everywhere—so, even if I do not agree with everything that it has done or think that it is perfect, I have seen its effort and willingness to engage.
Every local authority should be engaged in that process. The designation aspect of the Bill acknowledges the unique character of each town and each high street, emphasising that a one-size-fits-all approach is not the way forward. By conducting comprehensive and periodic reviews, we can ensure that the distinctive needs and opportunities of each community are met. As for the specific proposals in the Bill and things that we need to be careful about, as we have heard, it is said that each area needs between one and three high streets. As I have said, there are a number of high streets in my constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton, who shares my local authority, has several in her constituency. Across Cheshire East there are probably dozens of high streets. It is right not to say that we have to get going on every single one, but I would not want a local authority to choose, for example, the three rosiest high streets, with the best possible outcome already on the table. I hope that the guidance ensures that the selection of high streets gives some consideration to those that will be of most benefit in tackling the issues that we have discussed.
I want briefly to talk about vacancies and absent landlords. I welcome the work that has been done—I know that the Minister is passionate about it—on high street auctions. It is shocking, when we try to engage with landlords to tackle issues in Crewe, only to discover that they could not care less. We cannot get hold of them—the council cannot do so—or they might respond to one letter, but not to another. It is a free market, and people buy property. The state should be careful about designating exactly what it should do, but there must be limits for properties in locations of high community interest. We need to tackle that.
I want to touch on the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North about not thinking that this is all about freezing our high streets, or setting them in stone, or pushing back the tide. We have to accept that in the long run the retail footprint will shrink because of changes in online shopping. A smaller footprint is more sustainable in the long run, and we can think about replacements such as in-house living.
The legislation is an opportunity not only for inviting investment but for a firm political commitment to strengthening the fabric of our communities. It fosters political accountability and signals a commitment to the long-term wellbeing of our towns and high streets. I welcome its progress through the House, and I look forward to its becoming law, with benefits for multiple high streets across our country and our constituencies as a result.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I am inspired to say a few words in this debate, because I want to talk about my home town of Gainsborough, which is directly affected by this issue. Gainsborough is a traditional market and industrial town in north Lincolnshire. It is a small town that suffered from industrial decline in the 1970s. We had a fantastic scheme to redevelop the old factory right in the middle of the town, Marshall’s, which had been decaying for years. We turned it into a fantastic shopping centre, Marshall’s Yard—the whole thing is going really well. We also have Morrisons outside, and Tesco, which has been put up next to Marshall’s Yard.
That is all fantastic, but the problem is that it is sucking life away from the high street and the marketplace. A real issue for our town is that as we develop decaying industrial areas, or have more out-of-centre shopping centres, the inside of the town is decaying. It is a huge issue for all our towns. I have been fortunate enough to work with the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), and to get £10 million in levelling-up funding for the Gainsborough South West ward, which is directly helping us. In an old town such as Gainsborough, one of the keys is to use heritage. We had many decaying shops, and we put a fantastic amount of work into creating beautiful new shopfronts, which lifts the whole area.
Another point I want to make is that in the marketplace—which, again, has slightly suffered from the fact that the trade is being sucked into Marshall’s Yard—cars are not allowed to park. In France, Italy or Germany, cars are allowed to park in the marketplace, which brings in life. I know we are not supposed to have as many cars in the middle of towns as we used to, but Gainsborough is not London; it is a small town. Bringing in more life is quite important.
To sum all of this up, the Government have to work very carefully with the district councils at a very local level. West Lindsey District Council has a good record of working with central Government to try to ensure that we get development into the town, but I wonder whether having a Mayor for Lincolnshire is going to make a great deal of difference. As the Minister well knows, I am quite dubious about that idea: we are going to have a Mayor of Lincolnshire—a large rural area—as well as a county council, district councils, MPs and Ministers all competing for attention.
I am also worried about the consultation, which all veers towards the idea that we have to have a Mayor. When the Minister replies to this debate—this is one of the reasons I am speaking today—I want him to convince me that when he imposes a Mayor on Lincolnshire, who will need to have a salary and will be based in Lincoln, he is not going to suck power and resources from the really local authorities, the district councils, which are doing all the hard graft to improve our high streets.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) on his success in the private Member’s Bill ballot, and I am pleased to be responding on Second Reading of his Bill today. I start by thanking all Members who have taken part in the debate—the hon. Members for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Bury North (James Daly) and for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan), and the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who have all talked about their local areas. A couple of themes have emerged: partnership, people working together and the importance of heritage.
The purpose of the Bill is to place new requirements on local authorities in relation to high streets, as part of which—as we have heard—it allows councils to designate streets in their areas. The legislation has similarities to part 10 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, which allows local authorities to designate high streets and town centres for other purposes. This Bill, however, allows designation for the purposes of establishing improvement plans. We can all agree that supporting the future of our high streets needs backing from all levels of government, and local authorities certainly have an important part to play.
That is especially true given that it feels that in recent years people have been tolling the funeral bell for our high streets. In that time we have had the Government’s plan for the high street, the Build Back Better high streets strategy, and now the long-term plan for towns, but somebody walking through many of our town centres today would not know that. Unfortunately, it is all too common to see boarded-up shopfronts and closed shutters as fashion retailers, bank branches and countless small businesses on our high streets have been forced to shut up shop for good. Among those losses there have been success stories of individual shops and thriving high streets despite the odds, but it is hard not to look at the figures and think of decline.
Research carried out by the British Retail Consortium in 2023 found that 6,000 shops had closed for good in the previous five years. The sad truth is that the pain of losses is not felt equally. The BRC’s figures for April revealed that nearly a fifth of shops in the north-east are standing empty, compared with one in 10 in the south. Then there are the disparities between city centres and rural areas. Once again, the Government’s claim to levelling up rings hollow.
With these closures come workers losing their livelihoods and communities unable to access essentials. Bustling high streets are more than the sum of their parts; they are places where communities come together. That is why we cannot have any more business as usual; we need to be imaginative about how we make our high streets work for communities today. That requires careful planning. Labour has been clear that we want to see local authorities in the driving seat, giving local leaders the powers and flexibility needed to turbocharge growth in their areas.
In difficult circumstances, the differences that Labour councils have made in transforming local high streets is testament to that potential. The Bradford city centre growth scheme has brought 70 vacant high street units back into commercial use. In Wolverhampton, the council has plans to transform a derelict site into a food and entertainment venue in the heart of the city.
For local communities to succeed, they need the right tools. It is no secret that 13 years of Tory economic mismanagement have left local authorities struggling. This Government’s efforts to support high streets have involved a begging bowl approach that has pitted communities against each other, with old pots of money discontinued, packaged up and resold as new. Labour would put a stop to that micromanagement and empower communities to grow their local economies as they know best.
Dr Mullan
I recognise that there are challenges when there is a more public process for the allocation of funds, but I hope the hon. Member would accept that if her party was lucky enough to be in government, there would be a set pot of money. Even if behind the scenes her Government were making some tough decisions about who does and does not get it, they will not be giving everybody every bit of money that they want—unless, of course, Labour has further plans beyond the current £28 billion to ensure that every high street that wants money gets it.
Liz Twist
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention, but this matter is about planning and giving local authorities powers to decide what is best for their own areas. There is a challenge.
We will scrap business rates and bring in a fairer system, which would reduce the burden on high street premises. We will tackle antisocial behaviour by introducing new town centre police patrols and putting an end to the £200 rule that stops shoplifting being investigated.
I am pleased that the Bill recognises the importance of local authority plans, and we will not be opposing it today, but a number of questions remain to be answered, and I hope that the Minister or the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South can answer them. For example, clause 3 makes the improvement plan a material planning consideration, but it is not clear by what mechanism those improvement plans would have to be taken into account when producing the local plan, as councils are required to do. Can the Minister or the hon. Member tell us how the provisions in the Bill align with neighbourhood plans? We have already heard an intervention about that.
James Daly
I am genuinely interested, because the hon. Lady has criticised the Government, and a number of Members have pointed to examples where money, whether in Belfast or wherever, has been going specifically to projects linked to regeneration. She appears to be saying, “We do not believe in any of that. Our policy is simply to hope that the local authority will make the right decisions.” I can tell her that the Labour local authority in Huddersfield has been making the wrong decisions for the past 30 years. That is why the council and the town are in the state they are in.
Liz Twist
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. As I said, I was interested to hear his earlier intervention on neighbourhood plans; that is one of the key things. We recognise the need to invest in order to make our high streets viable and lively, as many hon. Members have said, and I have already set out some of the steps that Labour would take to do that.
If we are to create welcoming, inclusive town centres that function as vital community spaces, those communities must have a say in their design. But to achieve that we need the return of a collaborative approach that empowers local authorities to thrive and play an active part. Labour has that vision, and I hope that the Government will adopt it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) on his success in the ballot and his sponsorship of this important and worthwhile private Member’s Bill. His unwavering commitment and efforts to champion our high streets, including those he mentioned in his remarks, has led to this matter being raised in the House. I thank other hon. Members for backing the Bill. I confirm that the Bill has the Government’s full support.
There are arguably few more visible barometers of a healthy local economy, local pride and quality of life than our high streets. I know that all too well from my experience as the Member of Parliament for Redcar and Cleveland. Like my hon. Friend, I am privileged and proud to represent the area where I grew up, but one of the reasons why I came into politics was that my area, my community, my town and my high street felt like places that had been forgotten and left behind by the incumbent political regime.
It can be hard for people who move around a lot, or perhaps those who live in a busy city, to understand what it feels like when a place we care about and where we have deep roots seems to have lost its way, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) said. I remember, when I was growing up, walking into Boro town centre with my mam and dad and hearing about Uptons. It is probably how my niece and nephews feel now when I talk about Woolworths—although, as was said, it looks like Woolies may be coming back.
Our high streets are not just places where people shop and access goods and services; they are the heart of our community life. They are places where people come together. Their success is therefore vital to realising our ambitions to level up economic growth and opportunity across the country, both economically and socially. That is why the challenges that our town centres have been facing in recent years need to be taken seriously.
Some town centres have weathered dramatic shifts in consumer behaviour and the legacy of the pandemic, but many have struggled. We have seen the collapse of major high street retailers such as Debenhams, and high streets that were once the soul of our communities are now blighted by low footfall, high vacancy rates and antisocial behaviour. The Government are committed to working with local communities to help turn that around.
The Bill will play an important role in that mission, alongside other Government interventions, as part of a broader strategy to help high streets recalibrate themselves back towards their communities. That includes putting billions into high street regeneration and renewal, including: a new high street and towns taskforce as part of our long-term plan for towns; measures to bring vacant properties back into use and make town centres safer through a crackdown on antisocial behaviour; a new £2.5 million high street accelerator programme bringing together businesses and community organisations to develop a long-term vision for revitalising high streets; and significant planning flexibilities to ensure that they continue to thrive as centres where commerce and community meet.
We know that every high street is different and that local areas are best placed to understand their own problems and find the right solutions through strong local partnerships on the ground. Those partnerships are often key to transforming the fortunes of our town centres. We want to support councils as well as local businesses and local communities and ensure that they have everything they need to succeed, so that wherever someone is in the country, they have a high street that meets the needs of their community and one that they can be proud of.
In that vein, may I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), who explained to me the need for investment in Bolsover town centre? I am delighted that we were able to award Bolsover £15 million of levelling-up funding in the autumn statement in November. I hope that Bolsover can use that funding and this Bill to improve its high street.
One of the most important ways we can make that a reality for more communities is for councils to use their powers in order to drive improvements. That is the aim of this Bill. We know that, for example, section 215 powers, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, which require land to be cleaned up when it is detracting from the surroundings, are not always deployed as well as they could be. That will only become more significant when the new high street rental auction powers are introduced later this year, which will further bolster the regeneration tools available to local authorities.
The Bill will require local authorities to designate at least one high street, and up to three, in their area and create plans to improve them, which should be published every five years. In choosing their high streets, local authorities will need to identify streets of specific economic, social and cultural importance in their area, assess their condition, and come up with plans to preserve and enhance them. Local residents, businesses, community organisations and others will rightly have a real say in those action plans, and the local council will be accountable for delivering them.
Dr Mullan
Picking up on the remarks I made in my speech, what can we do to ensure that councils are designating and putting the work into high streets that need it, rather than picking ones that are, thankfully, flourishing and perhaps less in need of attention? Potentially, councils could seek to avoid doing the hard work that we want to be put into these designations.
Jacob Young
We will work with local authorities and, no doubt, Members of this House to establish the right guidance for local authorities in choosing their high streets. They will also be subject to consultation, which I am about to talk about.
The Bill will require councils to consult on which high streets are chosen, and we have heard some early pitches today. It is exciting to imagine the difference that this could make: fewer empty shops, more people visiting high streets and staying longer, and a boost to local pride and people’s quality of life. As I said earlier, different areas have different challenges, so the improvements we can expect to see will vary. The focus in one area might be on tackling antisocial behaviour, whereas in another it could be on creating more green spaces to rest and socialise.
The Bill will create a duty on local authorities to take into account high street improvement plans when exercising their planning functions, which goes directly to the question from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist). That will support the already strong protections for mixed-use high streets and complement the tools available to local authorities, such as the changes made to use class orders in 2020 to create the new commercial, business and service use class mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South. This brings together high street uses such as shops, restaurants and offices, and enables changes between these uses without planning applications.
The high street improvement plans will also reinforce measures in the national planning policy framework that require local plans and decision making to support town centres to adapt and grow over the long term. In addition, they will support the use of section 215 powers, requiring unsightly land or property to be cleaned up. We recognise that local areas will know best what their high street improvement plans should cover.
James Daly
Will my hon. Friend comment on what he defines as a high street? Bolton Street, in my constituency, backs on to the East Lancs railway, which is in the process of making an application for £3 million to the community ownership fund. It is not simply about the shops on a high street; heritage projects and others in the immediate vicinity can benefit from Government money in driving regeneration as well.
Jacob Young
We have already heard examples of how high streets could be defined from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, but I look forward to such an application to the community ownership fund. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North for his regular plugs for the fund.
Once the Bill has received Royal Assent, we will issue guidance on developing improvement plans. We would, of course, welcome any input on what the guidance should contain from hon. Members or other interested parties. We recognise that it takes time to implement plans and see their impact. At the same time, it is important that the plans are meaningful and that they will not be neglected and left to gather dust. We believe that five years for reviewing and, if necessary, updating the improvement plans strikes the right balance, allowing enough time for them to take effect while ensuring that they remain relevant and central to the renewal and reinvigoration of our high streets. This is very much about local residents, businesses and communities seeing visible, meaningful improvements, but we recognise that that must not come at the cost of overburdening councils that are already under pressure. We will therefore ensure that local authorities have the extra funding they need to deliver the measures in the Bill effectively.
As I said earlier, the Bill builds on the extensive range of support we are already providing to truly level up our high streets, with local people in the driving seat.
Sir Edward Leigh
On his point about putting local people in the driving seat, will the Minister assure me that any powers or resources given to the Mayor of Lincolnshire will not suck resources away from West Lindsey District Council, which is the primary promoter of improvements on our high streets?
Jacob Young
I was going to come to that, but my right hon. Friend has brought it to my attention sooner. He mentions the landmark devolution deal for Greater Lincolnshire and that it comes with a Mayor, but he fails to mention the three quarters of a billion pounds that comes with that deal. I can assure him that we are giving more power and funding to communities like his in Greater Lincolnshire, and I urge him to support the introduction of a Mayor, which will be transformational for Greater Lincolnshire.
We are giving local authorities more support to truly level up their high streets. That support means more money, and we are investing billions of pounds in high streets that are sorely in need of a helping hand to get back on their feet. That includes our £1.1 billion long-term plan for towns—I am grateful to the shadow Minister for plugging that in her remarks—launched in October, which will power ambitious regeneration projects across the UK over the next decade. Through the plan, each town will develop a long-term plan for regeneration based on the priorities of local people, and receive a 10-year endowment-style fund worth £20 million to deliver transformational projects, from boosting the look and feel of town centres to protecting local heritage, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, to cracking down on anti-social behaviour. The plan will also establish a new high streets and towns taskforce to provide hands-on support and expert advice on place making, planning and design.
Our new towns unit, which was announced last week, headed by Adam Hawksbee, the Prime Minister’s towns tsar, will ensure that local leaders have the control they need over decision making. This funding comes on top of the £2.35 billion we are investing through our town deals, £830 million in future high streets funding and the £4.8 billion being invested into communities through the levelling-up fund, unlocking the economic potential of communities across the country, like mine in Redcar.
In Redcar, £25 million of funding is being invested through the town deal in regenerating the high street, demolishing the old Woolworths and M&S buildings, and creating a new leisure facility on the high street, as well as rejuvenating our much-loved seafront. Down the road in Eston, some of the £20 million of levelling-up funding we received is being invested in regenerating Eston Square and the precinct buildings. Not long after I was elected, I was given a book about the history of Eston by the former councillor, Ann Higgins. In the book, there was a picture of Mo Mowlam, one of my predecessors as MP for Redcar, meeting residents and businesses at the old James Finnigan Hall to discuss the deterioration of Eston town centre. More than two decades and four Members of Parliament later, we are finally delivering on that.
The funding demonstrates to the people of those towns, and others like them across the UK, that we are keeping the faith with them and delivering on the things that matter most to them. As I updated the House late last year, we have so far invested over £13 billion through all our levelling-up funding streams in regenerating communities nationwide, delivering real change in communities like Bury. I am so pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North plugged the community ownership fund in the way he did. His constituency has benefited from £1.5 million of investment directly into communities there, on top of the levelling-up funding of £20 million for Bury market and the flexi-hall.
Communities in Crewe and Nantwich are benefitting from £37 million through the towns fund and the future high streets fund. I was surprised to hear from my hon. Friends the Members for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) and for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) about Labour’s new car parking charges. Sadly, Labour has done the same in Redcar, and I urge my hon. Friends to keep up their campaign on behalf of constituents and businesses in their communities.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) for referencing the investment in his constituency, including in his cinema, and talking about the value of partnership working. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, whose Bill this is, mentioned the levelling-up partnership for Stoke. I assure him that, on top of the other funding that Stoke has already received, Longton remains part of our focus for the partnership.
Funding alone is not enough. To deliver real change, we are giving local people the power they need to make decisions on the ground about the future of their communities. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act introduces high street rental auctions to drive forward regeneration through changes to compulsory purchase powers; provides more flexible pavement licences for businesses; empowers local people to tackle symptoms of decline by bringing vacant units back into use; increases co-operation on regeneration between landlords and local authorities; and makes town centre tenancies more accessible and affordable, helping to attract new businesses to these areas and supporting the creation of new jobs and growth to sustain prosperity in the long term.
We are also making it a priority to get the fundamentals right. Tackling the causes and impacts of antisocial behaviour is key to ensuring that people feel safe, which is why we are using our wider antisocial behaviour action plan, published in March 2023, to make the heart of our towns better places to be. Measures to tackle the visual markers of decline include reopening boarded-up shops, improving the look and feel of public spaces, and giving tired public buildings a lick of paint. This includes the high street accelerator programme that I have the pleasure of leading, which will bring together businesses, residents and community organisations to develop a long-term vision for revitalising their town centre. Each of the 10 pilot schemes we have launched in towns such as Oldham, Scunthorpe and neighbouring Stoke will receive funding of £237,000 over two years to set up the partnership, develop the vision and begin to deliver change.
We have introduced significant planning flexibilities, so that local decision makers can make better use of the buildings in their town centre and ensure that our high streets remain places of social and commercial activity. Permitted development provides the freedom to change more premises from commercial to residential use, so that much needed homes can be created on high streets and in town centres.
Whether we are talking about smarter use of planning levers, getting boarded-up shops back up and running, making our streets safer, or investing billions in our town centres, we are breathing new life into our high streets, with local leaders, local people and businesses who know and love their communities best driving the changes that they know are needed to make a difference. The Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South builds on these significant efforts, and we are proud to support it. Like him, I appreciate just how much it matters to communities of the kind we represent. For them and for communities right across the country, this is about delivering on the commitments we have made to level up growth, opportunity and pride. We are sticking to our plans and staying the course, commencing the measures in the Bill at the appropriate time once the Bill has Royal Assent, and ensuring that local authorities have the right lead-in time and guidance to designate their high streets and create their improvement plans.
I am enormously grateful to my hon. Friend for introducing the Bill and to other hon. Members for their support and contributions during this debate. We are backing the Bill and backing our high streets. I commend the Bill to the House.
Jack Brereton
I am very grateful for the Minister’s kind words and for all his support and help in bringing the Bill forward. I am grateful also to all the hon. Members across the House who have shown their support today. We have heard some incredibly impassioned speeches, which just shows how much people care about their high streets and the towns, villages and communities in the constituencies they represent. Speaking for the Opposition, the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) referred to local plans and neighbourhood plans, and I think it is right that the Bill is part of that, but it is about due consideration being given to certain matters in those plans. The Bill is not about stopping development that sits outside its scope—new and exciting developments coming to our high streets. It is just about giving due consideration, so I do not think having the matters set out in the Bill will have a major impact.
Turning to Members’ contributions, I particularly thank the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North for raising the importance of those heritage and cultural assets—building vibrancy, creating footfall, and attracting people to our high streets. I was also particularly interested in what the hon. Member for Belfast East said about there being too few partnerships. That is what this Bill is trying to address: the need to bring people together to have that governance and those plans to help address some of the issues in our town centres.
To my hon. Friends over the border in Cheshire, particularly to my hon. Friends the Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan), I say that it was absolutely shocking to hear about those plans to increase and create parking charges in some of their town centres. I know that that will have a major impact. I have enjoyed visiting some of the towns in the communities that they represent, and I know that those plans will have a damaging and detrimental impact on them. A number of Members referenced the fact that we have many out-of-town developments with free parking. That will only further emphasise the move towards those out-of-town retail spaces and cause more damage to our high streets and town centres just at a time when we do not need it. I entirely agree with them and wish them well with their campaigns. I wish to thank all Members across the House for their contributions, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who also mentioned the impact of out-of-town shopping areas.
I stress that we have been working hard to get this Bill together. I hope that we can continue to work across the House to bring it forward and take it through the other place and deliver what will I think be an important piece of legislation to get our high streets back on track—to revive them and to bring people back into our towns and communities so that they can thrive once again.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Public Bill Committee (Standing Order No. 63).
High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill: Money
Tuesday 5th March 2024
(8 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)
I beg to move,
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided.
The Government fully support the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) to improve our nation’s high streets.
Jack Brereton
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—I will not detain the House long. I just wanted to put on the record my huge thanks and appreciation to my hon. Friend the Minister, his officials and the Whips Office for all the support that they have given me and my Bill—it is an important Bill. Members across this House care deeply about high streets, and I am grateful for the support that I have received from them. I hope that the Bill will continue to move forward with success—we have Committee stage soon—on its way towards Royal Assent.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I do apologise to the hon. Gentleman. He did indicate to me that he wished to speak, but the business was moving so fast that I overlooked him.
Question put and agreed to.
High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill
Wednesday 13th March 2024
(8 months, 1 week ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 13 March 2024 - (13 Mar 2024)
The Chair
Before we begin, I have a few preliminary reminders for the Committee. Please switch electronic devices to silent. No food or drink is permitted during sittings of this Committee, except for the water provided. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members could email their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. My selection and grouping for today’s meeting is available online and in the room and I have selected the amendments in the name of the Member in charge of the Bill, Jack Brereton.
Clause 1
Designation of High Streets
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 1, page 1, line 3, after first “street” insert
“, or a network of streets,”.
This amendment enables a local authority to designate a network of streets in its area as a single high street for the purposes of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 2, in clause 1, page 1, line 7, leave out from “one” to end of line 8 and insert
“designation under this section that is in force in its area”.
This amendment removes the upper limit of 3 streets on what a local authority may designate as high streets for the purposes of the Bill.
Amendment 3, in clause 1, page 1, line 9, after first “street” insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 4, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, after “is” insert
“, or (as the case may be) all of the streets comprising the network of streets are,”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 5, in clause 1, page 1, line 11, at end insert “or streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 6, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, after first “street” insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 7, in clause 1, page 1, line 13, leave out “its importance” and insert
“the importance of the street or streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 8, in clause 1, page 1, line 15, leave out from “Before” to “under” and insert “making a designation”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 9, in clause 1, page 2, line 5, after “day” insert
“, in relation to a local authority,”.
This amendment clarifies the meaning of “designation day” for the purposes of clause 1(2) of the Bill in the event that clause 1 is not commenced on a single day.
Amendment 10, in clause 1, page 2, line 6, at end insert
“in relation to that authority”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 9.
Clause stand part.
Amendment 11, in clause 2, page 2, line 8, at end insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 12, in clause 2, page 2, line 10, leave out “and its importance” and insert
“or (as the case may be) all of the streets comprising the network of streets and the importance of the street or streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 13, in clause 2, page 2, line 12, at end insert “or streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 14, in clause 2, page 2, line 14, after first “street” insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 15, in clause 2, page 2, line 15, at end insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 16, in clause 2, page 2, line 19, leave out
“designated the street as a high street”
and insert
“made the designation under section 1”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 17, in clause 2, page 2, line 21, after “must,” insert “at least once”.
This amendment makes clear that a local authority may carry out more than one review of an improvement plan within each 5-year review period if it considers it appropriate to do so.
Amendment 18, in clause 2, page 2, line 40, after “street” insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Clause 2 stand part.
Amendment 19, in clause 3, page 3, line 6, after “1,” insert
“or
(b) comprised in a network of streets that is designated as a high street under section 1,”
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 20, in clause 3, page 3, line 7, at end insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 21, in clause 3, page 3, line 15, after “street” insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 22, in clause 3, page 3, line 16, after “street” insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Clause 3 stand part.
Clauses 4 to 6 stand part.
Jack Brereton
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I thank all colleagues for serving on the Committee and I am delighted that the Bill has reached this stage. I thank all those who have supported my Bill. In particular, I thank the Minister and the Department for the fantastic support I have received from them; they helped to make this possible. I also thank all the House staff who have supported me in progressing my Bill. I thank the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the British Property Federation, Power to Change and representatives from the Local Government Association Conservative group for meeting me to discuss my Bill and for their support.
Our high streets matter. They matter to our constituents and they matter to us as parliamentarians representing high streets up and down the country. According to data commissioned by Historic England, 73% of people said that their local high street is important to them, but 54% feel pessimistic about its future. The condition of our high streets is intrinsically linked to the success and condition of the communities that surround them. My Bill is about helping to secure the successful future we all want to see for our high streets.
Clause 1 sets out powers for local authorities to designate high streets in their area based on their importance to the local economy and their use. That should be done in consultation with key stakeholders and individuals from the area. This reflects that the fact that in those areas where there is effective partnership, with councils, communities, and high street businesses and property owners coming together, significant progress can be achieved. We are starting to see early signs of what can be achieved in towns such as Longton in my constituency thanks to the work of organisations such as Urban Wilderness and the owners of the Longton Exchange precinct, but we need to go much further to see the transformation necessary to attract new uses to fill those empty spaces and help our high streets to thrive again.
Recognising the success of our high streets will inevitably require change. That is why clause 2 details the need for high street improvement plans that would set out the condition of the high street and its importance to the local economy as well as proposals for its preservation and enhancement.
Sadly, many of our high streets have struggled as a result of the move online and out of town, and the pandemic. We cannot allow that decline to continue. These measures are about helping our high streets to turn the corner and be transformed for the future. They build on measures already introduced by the Government through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, and powers already in place through a number of other provisions.
Why is it important? Many of these powers, such as the use of section 215 enforcement notices for buildings in a poor state, are not being used to best effect. Despite Government guidance illustrating the important role that such powers can play in achieving wider regeneration of an area, my own local authority, Stoke-on-Trent City Council, did not issue a single 215 notice last year.
As I said on Second Reading, the Bill is about getting local authorities to use the powers that are now in place to get on top of the challenges and to take action on the issues that are important to high street users or that bring in new uses. By putting in place a duty to create high street improvement action plans, we can help bring forward the change and better co-ordination that are needed. Ensuring full engagement and consultation with key high street and town centre stakeholders is essential, so the development of action plans must bring people and organisations together to deliver the transformation that many of our high streets need.
Clause 3 sets out the due regard that local authorities should give to improvement plans as part of the planning process, but is designed so as not to be restrictive. It is certainly not about preventing positive new development on our high streets that might not have been considered when an improvement plan was put together. Instead, it is about ensuring that consideration is given to the context of improvement plans in determining permission for new development. The granting of planning permission, as per the normal planning process, will remain entirely at the discretion of local authorities. Additionally, improvement plans are not designed to duplicate existing planning policies, such as local or neighbourhood plans, but should complement them.
Clause 4 sets out the powers necessary for the Secretary of State to make regulations that may be necessary for the implementation of clauses 1 to 3. Clause 5 provides definitions for the interpretation of the Bill, and clause 6 focuses on the extent and commencement of the Bill.
As Members will be aware, I have tabled several amendments, mainly to tidy up and improve the clarity of the legislation. A number of them are also consequential on one another. I will focus on a few of them. First, amendment 1 and its related amendments would allow for a network of streets to be considered as the high street area, rather than just a single street. That picks up on the points made on Second Reading by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North and the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) about ensuring that the definition of “high street” reflects that that is often made up of a collection of streets, rather than just a single street.
Amendment 2 would address some of the concerns expressed about the upper limit on the number of designations a local authority may make. Originally, it was intended that there should be a minimum of one and a maximum of three. That was done to ensure the number of designations did not become too onerous on local authorities. However, following discussions with the Department and a number of colleagues and others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough, who is serving with us on the Committee today, it has been agreed that we should remove the upper limit and give discretion to local authorities. Importantly, that reflects the fact that we have local authorities of varying sizes, with some having many more high streets than others.
Amendment 9 is merely a clarifying amendment for the meaning of “designation day”. Finally, amendment 17 is about the frequency of reviews of designated high street improvement plans. While the Bill sets out that reviews must take place within a five-year period, amendment 17 makes clear that local authorities can review plans more frequently if they choose to and make any necessary or desirable changes sooner than five years.
To conclude, my Bill will make a significant difference in helping to support our high streets to thrive again, helping to stem the tide of decline that has all too frequently been experienced across the country by putting a duty on local authorities to define high streets, assess their condition and devise improvement plans to help them to improve and to provide the focus needed to succeed. That will influence the effective partnership and co-ordinated action that will help our high streets to attract in new uses, to improve the condition of our high street buildings and to encourage more people to visit and support our local high streets so that they thrive again.
Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I rise to agree with much of what has already been said. I truly appreciate and support the aims of this Bill and in particular clause 2 and the duty on local authorities to create high street improvement plans. I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South for bringing the Bill forward.
I have been an MP for two years now, and our high street in Erdington is one of the main concerns of my local residents. High streets are the beating heart of our communities, linking people to every part of their lives, whether that is walking to school, buying their shopping, going to church, visiting a friend, going to the pub or going out for a cup of coffee. But up and down the country, high streets are frankly in a sorry state. That is why I strongly support clause 2(1)(b), which places a duty on local authorities to create a plan that preserves and enhances our streets.
I have lived in Erdington for 36 years. I remember raising my family in a town where everything we needed and everyone we wanted to see could be found on the high street. I have received a number of comments from constituents who have contacted me since the beginning of the year.
“After seeing details on the Next-door app regarding an 87 year old man being badly beaten up and personal items taken from him outside Erdington library, I’m really really scared to get myself out. I would not be able to protect myself like this gentleman did.”
Another comment said:
“As a constituent and a person who works in the area it’s concerning to see the frequency of anti-social behaviour increasing in Erdington high street. Most recently, we’ve had the window smashed in Costa, physical assault and robbery near the library and physical assault outside WHSmith.”
Another said:
“I know Erdington missed out on the levelling up grant twice and I know there was a very ambitious regeneration plan drawn up and Erdington is not alone with this decline in the issues of the high street, but surely something can be done to regenerate it and stop the decline.”
It is a real shame that Erdington has twice been rejected from the levelling-up fund, despite two great bids that would have transformed our area.
It would be remiss of me not to highlight how worrying it is that the Bill is needed in the first place. Local people need to see improvements in their high streets, but, with eight local authorities having issued a section 114 notice since 2018, and the £4 billion hole in council funding arrangements for the next year, I worry that by designating this power and responsibility to local authorities, we are letting the Government off on failing to properly fund the regeneration of our high streets.
I recognise that the Bill comes with a money resolution, but I want to place on record my view that the money to preserve and enhance the high streets that are at the heart of our communities should not have come from a private Member’s Bill, but from the Government themselves. Let me end on a positive and bipartisan note by sincerely thanking the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South for bringing forward this Bill. I hope it will serve to improve our high streets for generations to come.
Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)
It is an absolute delight to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) for bringing forward this excellent Bill. The key word in the title of the Bill is “improvement” and, in my view, that is something we need on all levels. I see this more as a matrix that would bring forward all sorts of improvements to a town centre.
I will talk about Loughborough and Shepshed, because I have two towns in my constituency. Shepshed has recently received a large amount of section 106 funding, which has helped to improve the centre of the town, where there is new paving. That took a while to deliver, but it has lifted the town centre enormously, and Brook Street looks absolutely beautiful now.
Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)
I rise to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, my constituency neighbour, on this outstanding Bill. As he and I well know, Stoke-on-Trent is a classic example of why amendment 1 is so important, because it allows for more than three streets to be designated. Stoke-on-Trent is a city of six towns, each with its own identity and network of streets, and it is hugely important that the symbiotic relationship of streets is recognised by designating networks.
We all know that regenerating one street often attracts retailers to it, and the neighbouring street may then suffer and see shops closing. It is very important that we look at our high streets and our town and city centres holistically, and the Bill goes a long way towards doing that. I am absolutely supportive and I congratulate my hon. Friend again.
James Grundy (Leigh) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South on bringing forward this important piece of legislation. My constituency has a number of towns, and I am pleased to be speaking in the 125th anniversary year of the creation of the county borough of Leigh, which was granted its own town charter in 1899. We hope that in future Leigh will once again have its own borough.
The towns in my constituency have benefited from various schemes that the Government have introduced. I think particularly of the Tyldesley heritage action zone, which has regenerated Elliott Street in Tyldesley and has been held up nationally as an example of how to work with the community in developing and regenerating some of our northern post-industrial towns.
At the other end of the constituency is Golborne, where we need to do a lot of work on redesignating the high street because we are submitting our final bid to reopen Golborne station, which is just off the high street, and I suspect there will be much more footfall there in years to come. Hopefully the station will be up and running by 2027, meaning that Golborne will once again see life to it after more than 60 years without a railway station.
Leigh itself has benefited from the levelling-up fund. We have had £11.4 million, although sadly not the full £20 million because, as the Minister knows, Wigan Council failed to bid for the full amount, leaving £8.6 million on the table that is not benefiting one of the poorest towns in the north of England. However, I am pleased to say that we have had the full £20 million of future towns funding, which I very much welcome. There is a lot of work to do in Leigh, including the regeneration of Leigh market just off Bradshawgate, Bradshawgate itself and the town square outside the town hall. Many of those schemes have cross-party support and the support of a number of community organisations such as Leigh Township Forum.
My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough mentioned the post-internet town centre. I pay tribute to Leigh Means Business, which is one of the community organisations that have been trying to drive regeneration in the town of Leigh and which has come up with a website—I hesitate to call it an app, because I am not that technologically minded—that lists all the shops in the town centre and what they provide to local residents. It will come up on people’s phones if they are in a local shop and they have downloaded it—or that is the intention—and say, “Are you also looking for this thing?”, and link to something in a nearby shop that provides that good or service. I warmly welcome what my hon. Friend said.
The designation of a high street is important. I would be remiss if I failed to mention the town of Atherton—I currently have the bottom half of it in my constituency, and after the boundary review I will hopefully have the entirety of it—which in many ways led the way in our borough on small town high street regeneration. That has been done in a very piecemeal manner by the independent councillors, with the support of local businesses, but in many ways what we saw in Atherton was a beta test for what worked and what did not.
My constituency has a number of towns that all benefit from the regeneration that the Government have brought forward, and the various moneys associated with that, but I welcome the deliberate designation of specific streets within town centres as high streets. It is important to target that funding carefully and designate zones for specific actions. With that, I feel I have made my point and will sit down, but I strongly welcome the measures in the Bill.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I warmly welcome the Bill, but may I make one point? With everything that we ever talk about in this place, it normally comes down to the Government or the state doing everything. If people do not have pride in their area, if people do not care about their fellow citizens or the town or place where they live, and if people cannot behave in a way that is not yobbish or does not intimidate other people, this will not work. I find it incredibly tiresome to hear people throwing numbers up in the air and saying, “If we invest this amount of money, then suddenly a miracle will happen and everything will be fine.” It will not. People have to behave and they have to have pride in their area and care about it. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South does and that that underpins this Bill.
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
Thank you, Sir Charles. I had not indicated that I wished to speak, but I want to add a couple of things.
I very much welcome the Bill and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South for bringing it forward. Dudley high street and those in a couple of peripheral areas in my constituency, Sedgley and Gornal, suffer from what most high streets have suffered from since the advent of the tsunami that the digital age brought with it. I suspect that each and every one of us in this room is guilty of contributing, in our own small way, to their gradual demise, which was unfortunately super-accelerated by covid, when everybody was asked to operate from home and therefore through their laptops, and everything was delivered to our doorsteps.
I do think that local councils need help—they have needed it for some time—but I also think that local government should be doing more anyway. In Dudley I have argued for a masterplan for our town centre, which is effectively what the Bill asks for. If it becomes the adopted policy of local councils, they can decide how many pound shops, charity shops and fish and chip shops they want on their high street. As things stand, if a particular building has a particular planning designation, there could be 20 of each—I might mention Turkish barber shops that do not have many Turkish people in them.
This is a good Bill and I warmly support it, for the reasons I have given. It strikes the right balance between what my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North indicated—let us take back some pride in our high streets—and some of the extra motivation that I think local government needs.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)
Thank you, Sir Charles. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I am grateful for the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South on this issue, and I am pleased to speak in the Committee on this important Bill.
As my hon. Friend laid out, the Bill will ensure that local authorities effectively use their powers to support high streets in their areas to perform well, and to drive improvements where that is not the case. This will be a valuable tool in enabling us to meet our ambition of creating thriving high streets and town centres. I am sure it will come as no surprise to my hon. Friend that I support all the amendments he has tabled. They are largely technical in nature, but they are important to ensure that the Bill has its intended effect of strengthening high streets across the country.
Clause 1 introduces a new duty on local authorities to designate high streets in their area, meaning that local authorities will need to carefully consider and identify streets of specific economic, social and cultural importance in their area that may require particular attention to ensure that they are performing well.
Amendments 1 and 3 to 8 will ensure that local authorities are able to designate a network of streets in their area, as well as a single street or part of a street, as a high street for the purposes of the Bill. That will ensure that high streets made up of a crossroads or a flow of streets are not overlooked or misrepresented. While technical in nature, the amendments are important to the Bill’s effectiveness and reflective of how people view their high street. They will mean that streets such as Nottingham Road, between Loughborough town centre and the station, could be brought into scope. In my constituency, they will mean that the High Street in Redcar can also include Station Road and Queen Street.
Jack Brereton
I thank the Minister for his kind words and for some of the comments that he made. I agree with him entirely that the amendments are very much about ensuring that the Bill is reflective of how people feel about their high streets, and that it is complementary to much of the work the Government are doing already to support the revival of our high streets.
I thank all Committee members for serving and supporting me with my Bill, and for their comments. I will go through some of them. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington mentioned the importance of the high street to her constituency and community, and some of the issues with crime and antisocial behaviour that she has seen in her community. I am absolutely attuned to those issues, having seen similar things in many of the communities and high streets in my area. The impact that has on people being able to go to high streets and feel safe is particularly important. Some of the Government’s work on the safer streets fund is particularly important to reference, because it can make a massive difference in trying to make areas feel more safe. In Longton in my constituency, we have secured considerable amounts of money through the safer streets fund to invest in safety improvements.
My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough talked about the impacts of online and the internet, which have had such a significant effect. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North also mentioned that. It is essential that we take action to address some of those issues and bring people together to create a destination, as my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough described, not just for traditional retail but for entertainment. She also mentioned the important role of BIDs, which will be integral and play a key role in parts of this legislation. They will be one of the key partners that can help to formulate the improvement plans.
I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central for her points, particularly about amendments 1 and 2 and why they are important for our city, which is because we are a city made up of six towns, all with unique identities. She also mentioned the importance of not causing displacement from one part of a high street to another, which is why the amendments are so important.
I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh, who made some extremely important points about his constituency and the benefits that heritage action zones have brought. I have seen that in my own constituency and across Stoke-on-Trent. They are particularly important and can play a significant role, because many of our high streets contain so much important heritage. My hon. Friend also mentioned the importance of cross-party working and the work he has done on Golborne station. I recall that that was reflected by the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, who complimented my hon. Friend on the incredible and instrumental work he has done to progress that project. Even the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester thinks he is doing a fantastic job.
I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North, who mentioned the importance of the Bill being about not just local authorities. He is absolutely right: this is about not just local authorities. Although they can perform a co-ordinating role, it is about trying to get businesses, communities, property owners and all those who care deeply about their high streets to be involved in the process and to formulate plans.
Finally, I want to reflect further on the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North. He illustrated the importance of having a masterplan for an area to the rebirth and rejuvenation of our high streets. It can play such an integral role. I hope the efforts we are making through this Bill will help to deliver that. Without further ado, I ask the Committee to accept amendment 1.
The Chair
We now need an outbreak, or a continuation, of good humour and patience from the Committee, because, funnily enough, we have a lot to get through.
Amendment 1 agreed to.
Amendments made: 2, in clause 1, page 1, line 7, leave out from “one” to end of line 8 and insert
“designation under this section that is in force in its area”.
This amendment removes the upper limit of 3 streets on what a local authority may designate as high streets for the purposes of the Bill.
Amendment 3, in clause 1, page 1, line 9, after first “street” insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 4, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, after “is” insert
“, or (as the case may be) all of the streets comprising the network of streets are,”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 5, in clause 1, page 1, line 11, at end insert “or streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 6, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, after first “street” insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 7, in clause 1, page 1, line 13, leave out “its importance” and insert
“the importance of the street or streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 8, in clause 1, page 1, line 15, leave out from “Before” to “under” and insert “making a designation”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 9, in clause 1, page 2, line 5, after “day” insert
“, in relation to a local authority,”.
This amendment clarifies the meaning of “designation day” for the purposes of clause 1(2) of the Bill in the event that clause 1 is not commenced on a single day.
Amendment 10, in clause 1, page 2, line 6, at end insert
“in relation to that authority”.—(Jack Brereton.)
See explanatory statement to Amendment 9.
Clause 1, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
High street improvement plans
Amendments made: 11, in clause 2, page 2, line 8, at end insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 12, in clause 2, page 2, line 10, leave out “and its importance” and insert
“or (as the case may be) all of the streets comprising the network of streets and the importance of the street or streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 13, in clause 2, page 2, line 12, at end insert “or streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 14, in clause 2, page 2, line 14, after first “street” insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 15, in clause 2, page 2, line 15, at end insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 16, in clause 2, page 2, line 19, leave out
“designated the street as a high street”
and insert
“made the designation under section 1”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 17, in clause 2, page 2, line 21, after “must,” insert “at least once”.
This amendment makes clear that a local authority may carry out more than one review of an improvement plan within each 5-year review period if it considers it appropriate to do so.
Amendment 18, in clause 2, page 2, line 40, after “street” insert “or network of streets”.—(Jack Brereton.)
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Clause 2, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Planning functions: duty to have regard to high street improvement plans
Amendments made: 19, in clause 3, page 3, line 6, after “1,” insert “or
(b) comprised in a network of streets that is designated as a high street under section 1,”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 20, in clause 3, page 3, line 7, at end insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 21, in clause 3, page 3, line 15, after “street” insert “or network of streets”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Amendment 22, in clause 3, page 3, line 16, after “street” insert “or network of streets”.—(Jack Brereton.)
See explanatory statement to Amendment 1.
Clause 3, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 4 to 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Question proposed, That the Chair do report the Bill, as amended, to the House.
Jack Brereton
I thank you, Sir Charles, and everybody who has taken part in the debate today. It has been a fantastic and wide-ranging debate, and I hope that we can move forward as swiftly as possible, with Report stage on 26 April.
Jacob Young
I would like to thank the officials.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill, as amended, accordingly to be reported.
High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill
Friday 26th April 2024
(6 months, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 26 April 2024 - (26 Apr 2024)
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I am delighted to be able to express thanks to colleagues from across the House for their support for this important Bill. I am grateful to the Minister and his officials for their highly constructive engagement at every stage. It has been enormously helpful to draw on the Department’s formidable professionalism and expertise. I thank the Whips Office, and particularly the Comptroller of His Majesty’s Household, my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), for all her support. I thank the House staff in the Public Bill Office for their support. I also thank the many organisations and individuals who have helped to inform this Bill through conversations I have had with them and reports I have read over many years. I have managed to bring them together thanks to the private Member’s Bill ballot.
I am a passionate believer in local government. My experience at Stoke-on-Trent City Council as a cabinet member for regeneration, transport and heritage informs much of my keen interest in high streets and how to deliver the mechanisms that will co-ordinate preserving and enhancing them. From my most recent engagements, I particularly thank the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the British Property Federation, Power to Change, the British Retail Consortium and the Local Government Association for adding greatly to my thinking and my determination to secure a Bill with cross-party support. Many conversations with local bodies, individuals and businesses over the years have informed the Bill and I place on record my thanks to them all. Most recently, I met representatives of the Stoke-on-Trent business improvement district, and I am delighted that they support my Bill.
No Bill is without critics, but where I have encountered them, they have been good natured and constructive. For the most part, we have resolved our differences through clarification and amendment in Committee. It is a necessary debate and it has been conducted well. I seem to have struck a chord with Members across the House in arguing that local authorities should be guided towards better co-ordination in ensuring that they understand the dynamics of local high streets in our constituencies, and should work in concert with local communities, property owners and high street businesses to preserve and enhance those treasured places in a way that serves and grows our local economies.
Our high streets are the beating heart of our communities, which was again evident at the vibrant Longton carnival and pig walk parade in my constituency last weekend. It was incredible to see thousands of people flock to the town centre. Huge thanks go to all the volunteers, particularly those in Urban Wilderness and Longton Exchange shopping centre who helped organise the event. It is also fantastic to see the expansion of the number of retailers that are setting up and the businesses that are opening in Longton. We have seen a reduced number of empty spaces, particularly in the Longton Exchange shopping centre, with new independent retailers setting up. They include Keep It Local and So Very Dog and also, across the road from my office, the oatcake shop Linny’s Kitchen, which I occasionally like to pop into for my lunch.
I also detect a strong belief that we as Members should be active participants in agreeing local designations, contributing to reviews, and compiling or commenting on improvement plans for our areas. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mrs Hamilton) made an excellent and passionate speech in Committee in support of the principles of the Bill and how determined she is to see improvements in Erdington that she has been pushing for as a result of it. I know our high streets are close to her heart and I thank her for that powerful contribution.
Under the Bill, it will be for the Secretary of State to draw up the guidance. As he is an assiduous constituency MP, I am confident that he will have read the mood of the House that Members should be included as consultees. That is important, because it is also implicit in the Bill that local authorities will occasionally designate high streets that include property that belongs to bodies that are formally accountable to this House, rather than to local government. Network Rail is an obvious example. Indeed, in Committee, the Minister revealed that his own local high street area in Redcar includes Station Road, which I believe ends in Redcar Central station—but I will leave the local knowledge to him. It is important to leave as much of the process as we can as local as possible.
I stress that in Committee, following the passing of the money resolution on 5 March, the Minister explicitly promised money on the table for drawing up reviews of up to three high street areas per local authority This money, for up to three designated high street improvement plans, will be on top of that from the various grant-makers with pots of national money—bodies that are scrutinised by this House—to which any designated high street might appeal to realise improvements and, in particular, to preserve the important heritage and iconic character of many of our high streets. It is right that Members should be closely involved in helping to deliver on improvement plans, developing place partnerships that enjoy local support, leveraging both local and/or national funding and optimising the co-ordination of existing funding towards a compelling sense of direction for our high streets.
On Second Reading, I told the House about the aims I had for the Bill; the House kindly indulged my half-hour speech covering the issues, and Members across the House offered various constructive comments that have led to further improvements and clarifications through amendments that I was able to secure in Committee. I was not intending to speak for quite as long today, but I think the Whips are encouraging me to do so, so I will indulge the House a little longer.
We enjoyed a comprehensive and informed debate on Second Reading. Thanks to suggestions from that debate, specifically from my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) and the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda), the Bill was amended in Committee and now explicitly states that a high street can be designated to cover not just one road, but a collection of adjoining streets that are considered locally to be a high street area by virtue of the cluster of high street purposes served by those streets.
It is an important improvement to the Bill that it now specifically confirms that flexibility, which had only weakly been implicit in the right to vary designations and not explicit in making them in the first place. My aim has always been that the Bill should be demanding, but not onerous; it seeks to co-ordinate existing workstreams better, rather than add to net burden, and its provisions are deliberately as flexible as possible. It is vital for local communities to celebrate and preserve their local points of difference—all those things that make their particular high street a special place to be for residents and visitors alike.
Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on an excellent Bill. Does he agree that the history and heritage of our town centres can be what really marks them out as different? Basingstoke is often seen as a new town, which could not be further from the truth. It has a 1,000-year-old market and was the birthplace of Jane Austen, the world’s greatest novelist. Does he agree that we should be making more of that history in our town centres?
Jack Brereton
I thank my right hon. Friend for that excellent point and I entirely agree: that heritage, that historical character of our high streets in particular, in many of our towns and cities right across the country, is so important and we need to make more of that heritage, particularly when thinking about attracting new uses to our high streets. Many of those heritage properties can be converted into excellent spaces for a whole range of new uses, attracting footfall and new businesses to the high street.
As I was saying, the Bill is also about ensuring that local authorities conform to a national requirement and that they undertake the process of designation, review and improvement in accordance with their local circumstances, with assistance from national datasets and best practice analyses that already exist and can be signposted through the Secretary of State’s guidance. Getting the balance right between local differences and national requirements is a concern. It was clear from colleagues that the original Bill, which specified that the local authorities should designate no more than three high streets, was not getting the balance right, and that the maximum number of high streets designated in each area should be a decision for each local authority. That change was secured in Committee; if local authorities wish to fund designations and reviews in addition to the three that will be funded by Government, they now can do so.
Of course, there will be numerous disagreements around which areas to designate as high streets and when. My own area is a city made up of six towns, and there are many other high streets right across north Staffordshire. There may well be spirited debate locally about how to improve them. There will even be disagreement, I am sure, about what the Secretary of State’s guidance should include and what central funding, if any, should be available. This Bill sets out a supportive and predictable framework in which such debates can and must take place, bringing the focus and direction that our high streets desperately need.
The Bill directly addresses a problem highlighted in December 2021 by the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee in its excellent report, “Supporting our high streets after Covid-19”, namely the absence of a plan for ensuring that local authorities have a capacity to develop effective place partnerships and place leadership. The Bill introduces the mechanism of designation and review, under guidance, and this is supported with national funding for up to three improvement plans that will be developed in partnership locally, led by local authorities.
I completely understand the reaction that local government often has when it feels as though it is being told it needs to do more. My background is at the coalface of local government policymaking. That is why I stress that the Bill seeks to get local government not so much to do more as to co-ordinate what it does better, with wider input and agreement, and a wider contribution of effort, in implementation and delivery from a range of interested partners in our high streets, ranging from community groups to our high street businesses. I am enthused by those authorities that can already see the benefits of having an improvement plan, and I am pleased that the money resolution means that the authorities that have been held back by the cost of formulating a plan will have that barrier removed.
The Bill provides the policymaking structure for motivating action in the use of the many powers that already exist and are at the disposal of local authorities, and in giving better accountability as to their use. The Bill ensures that our communities and high street businesses are empowered to call for the improvements that should be outlined in each plan.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on a brilliant Bill that will make such a huge difference. Does he agree that the Bill will also give more power to local people, who will be able to hold their local council, its cabinet and their local leaders to account? If they are not doing exactly what the Bill’s objectives set out, people can vote them out and bring in a new council that will ensure that its local high streets are managed properly and people are given the powers they need to grow the local economy.
Jack Brereton
I thank my hon. Friend for those kind words of support. She rightly says that this is about accountability and ensuring that the people in our local communities are in charge of their high streets and can ensure that those authorities, which have the power to bring about change, are held to account for that and for their decisions.
Section 215 enforcement notices and other enforcement mechanisms will certainly be part of that mix. Unfortunately, section 215 powers, which are about enforcement where properties are in a bad condition and owners are not taking responsibility for their buildings, have not been used in our area. I made a freedom of information request recently about that and we found out that Stoke-on-Trent City Council had not used those powers once in the past 12 months. That is shocking, given the blatant need for a carrot and stick approach to address some of the concerns about our high street.
Change of use will also be another aspect of this, and having further reviews every five years ensures that improvement plans are living, nimble and able to respond to changing views and circumstances. Nor should we presume that a plan could consider every eventuality, so although it will be important to give consideration to improvement plans as part of local planning policy, they should not restrict and prevent positive development that may not have been envisaged when a plan was formulated.
Additionally, reviews can happen more frequently than every five years, if necessary. Again, that was further clarified through amendment in Committee. Importantly, the Bill does not prescribe that improvement plans must be fully implemented, complete and whole within five years. I want to clear up any confusion that there may still be about that. Rather, the Bill provides for plans to be more of a moveable feast, subject to periodic review to check on the progress towards delivery of what might be called an “ideal model envisaged”. That means that improvement plans can include longer-term ambitions, guiding principles and characteristics for high streets well into the decades ahead, with the ability to finesse those at least every five years.
Of course, there is the duty not to leave the plans covering dust on a shelf. Having a long-term vision that is delivered incrementally with maintained local support is the right thing to do. We can all think of examples of funding pots becoming available for so-called shovel-ready schemes, and many of us will have been frustrated when it turns out that nothing remotely shovel ready is on the books.
One of the great lessons of the high streets taskforce, which has been usefully embraced by a number of local authorities, including Longton, is the importance of getting a number of quick wins and a number of deliverable schemes within the shorter term, and having a longer-term vision and series of projects. The high streets taskforce has been an important and productive initiative for local councils of all colours, and I hope that its legacy, findings and best practice will live on through the Bill. It is work that deserves to be celebrated and continued, and we should all be grateful for the wealth of knowledge that the taskforce has contributed. The Bill is necessary to institutionalise that legacy further, developing it across local government and local communities. Having an improvement plan will help provide the basis for helping secure future funding, providing a more cohesive plan to help justify investment decisions, and will mean that certain schemes can be on the books whenever the funding is available. It also means that other projects that crop up can be knitted into the fabric to align better with the longer-term strategic vision and priorities for an area.
Without a clear vision of what a preserved and enhanced high street area would look like, I suggest that the spending would not be as optimal as it could, or should, be and the funding may not even be won at all. Much of the focus for Government investment would be better informed and would deliver better value for money through high street improvement plans. Indeed, local authorities and place partnerships will be able to engage with national bodies to push for certain optimal schemes or the refinement of them to help deliver greater benefits for our high streets within the spending envelope. That could mean infrastructure projects, such as with organisations like Network Rail and National Highways, environmental enhancements from organisations like the Environment Agency, or major housing delivery on some of our brownfields through organisations like Homes England. It is important that we improve the linkage of national organisations to better understand the needs of our local communities and high streets. Improvement plans can help do that through better co-ordination and clarity of direction.
High street improvement plans may also be important for Historic England in identifying areas in need of a partnership scheme in conservation areas, known as PSICA. The reviews of high streets will, in some cases, draw on conservation area appraisals as well. In some of those cases, that will expose the absence of appraisals and will help fill the gap, particularly where condition of those areas is poor. It has been exciting to work with Historic England in Longton to help save buildings on Market Street, and the heritage action zone funding we have secured has helped deliver on some of those buildings. However, it has not delivered on all those buildings, and we actually have a number of buildings that are still in a poor state. We have amassed knowledge and data about the ownership and condition of some of those buildings, and we need to move on to the next stage. I hope we will secure some additional funding for Longton through the heritage lottery fund to help improve and continue some of the good work already started through the PSICA scheme.
There is much more work to do, especially in ensuring that the traffic flow and public realm are optimised for footfall and dwell time in Longton town centre. I hope the use of some of the levelling-up partnership funding for the town centre will help. Also, some of the other plans that we have been developing, particularly around things like crime and antisocial behaviour, are important for many of our high streets and town centres. Longton has recently seen a spate of absolutely mindless crime and antisocial behaviour targeting a number of retailers. In the next few weeks, I will be meeting a number of them alongside Staffordshire police to discuss some of the issues.
I have been absolutely delighted to help secure more funding to address some of those issues. Working with our fantastic police, fire and crime commissioner, Ben Adams, we managed to secure extra Safer Streets funding for Longton, and for other parts of Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, to help deliver the improvements and create the secure high streets we need to see. In our case, they include additional CCTV throughout the town centre and gating off some of the alleyways that have attracted crime and antisocial behaviour. Those measures will help to ensure that people feel safe to visit, and encourage more people to dwell and shop on our high streets.
Only a comprehensive improvement plan can pull together the many factors and aspects that need proper co-ordination for a compelling high street experience. All that can be addressed in the guidance from the Secretary of State. I hope there will be a role for the Office for Place, now based in Stoke-on-Trent, in optimising the guidance. And it will be guidance, not prescription. I stress here that the Bill does not remove the power of article 4 direction that local authorities already enjoy to remove permitted development rights, if they see fit. That is a decision for them, and it will no doubt be part of the designation process to consider any PDR issues around a high street. In many areas, permitted development rights will actually be key to the enterprising spirit needed to revive high streets. Forward-thinking councils know full well that they cannot succeed in their regeneration ambitions if they allow themselves to have a reputation among developers of “council says no.”
The improvement plan process will ensure that authorities are comfortable as enablers of preservation and enhancements. We are blessed in Staffordshire, like in many parts of the country and particularly in north Staffordshire, to have many iconic high streets, whether in the more rural market towns of Stone and Cheadle, or in the pottery towns of Fenton and Longton that make up parts of the city of Stoke-on-Trent. But nearly all of them across the country have faced multiple challenges from online, out of town, and, of course, covid-19.
To conclude, we must act to address that decline, building on the work already being done by the Government through measures such as those set out in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, and ensuring the powers in place have a higher likelihood of being utilised. It has been a pleasure to bring the Bill forward and to work with colleagues across all parties to discuss it, review it and improve it on its passage through the House. We all want to see our high streets reviewed and improved. We want them to be preserved and enhanced to celebrate their local character. We want greater footfall, driven by high streets that are safe and pleasant places to be. The Bill ensures that local authorities work with property owners, local communities and many others to realise that aim, according to their own local circumstances. It is muscular localism, and I commend it to the House.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) on bringing forward such an important Bill. I think every Member of this House will have a problem high street that they feel frustrated about and cannot get any work done on. I hope he will allow me to talk about the success in my constituency, which I think echoes the sentiment of the Bill and shows what can be done when some of the things he wants to see in the Bill are achieved.
I want to talk about my hometown of North Shields. North Shields is probably best known for the Fish Quay. The Fish Quay is a shadow of its former self in one way, but because of a lot of work that has been done on development it is now thriving. It is full of restaurants and shops, and we have the fantastic North Shields Fishermen’s Heritage Project, which has done a lot to highlight and record the history of our town. Next year, North Shields will be celebrating its 800th anniversary. I lived in North Shields from when I was born until I was 19. We lived in an upstairs Tyneside flat and then, when I was 19, my family were thrilled to move to another great area of North Tyneside, Wallsend, into a brand new council house, when we still had council houses being built on a grand scale. That was 1976, so we can work out my age.
North Shields has two high streets. The one that runs parallel to the river east-west is Saville Street. The one that runs north-south is Bedford Street. As in many other town centres, there has been so much decline over the years. Various schemes have tried to bring the town centre back to life, but there have always been reasons why it has not really thrived. Town centres and high streets are so important because they bring communities together, with friends and family shopping and meeting in the same area. When I was young we went shopping on a Saturday, and we would not get very far along the high street before our mother saw a relative or friend, and there would be little groups of people chatting and going in and out of the shops. Our high streets were great community spaces. Going to high streets now is very sad, however, because there is no life in them. People are just going into the shops; one or two might gather to speak to each other, but that buzz has definitely gone.
However, North Tyneside Council developed a masterplan for the North Shields area, doing exactly what the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South mentioned: bringing communities together to talk about what they want. What has helped with that is that there has been funding. North Shields has nearly £13 million for a transport hub and a new town square to transform the town, making it attractive and family-friendly again with a vibrant, high-quality high street feel.
The transport hub opened last September, and I was pleased to be there to see that happen. It is amazing. The money that helped transform it—the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South will be able to mention this as an example—came from the transforming cities fund, which came via Transport North East with help from the North of Tyne Combined Authority and North Tyneside Council—as a proud former council member, I will never fail to sing the praises of the great Labour North Tyneside Council.
The transport hub is a major part of North Tyneside’s ambitious plan to improve North Shields. What is really fantastic about the hub is the public toilets, which are a vital part of any town centre and high street. In the past, because of antisocial behaviour, a lot of public toilets were closed, and shops do not always have toilets that people can use. Some people with medical conditions really need to know that there will be a toilet in the vicinity when they go out. I know someone with prostate cancer—this example is from my family experience—who carries a card that they can show to access a toilet, if no public toilets are available. But people do not want to have to do that; they want a bit more dignity and not to have to search around for a toilet.
The new bus station’s toilet facilities are fantastic. There are six individual cubicles, each with their own toilet and sink—everything is self-contained. I take the bus from Wallsend to North Shields, and so far the facilities are being well maintained. We might worry about what happens to such facilities in the town centre, but people are showing pride, and that is the key thing—the difference is that there is now pride in the town centre.
In the town square there is an area where people can sit—we are calling it the piazza, to be a bit posh in North Shields. Entertainment is also provided, and there is a big screen—we have already seen music there—and that is just off Bedford Street, which is now the main street. Saville Street, the other high street, is a lot quieter. People walk down Bedford Street and, halfway down, suddenly come across this wonderful piazza. Visitors who come on the metro or the bus get off and see this wonderful community facility in the heart of the shopping area. We have a green square a bit further over. The piazza is concrete—it has some plants—but it has a community feel.
The new hub is the council’s first building with fully carbon-neutral construction, and the council hopes to achieve carbon net zero by 2030. The hub is sustainable, and its design and materials are at the forefront. The building uses solar energy and manages waste surface water, which is particularly important. Art is being installed and, to include the community, there was a competition to design a memorial to one of North Shields’s most famous sons or daughters. The chosen memorial is to Thomas Brown, who received the George Medal after he retrieved the Enigma codes from a sinking boat, which shortened the war. He was only 16. Sadly, he died in a fire with his sister at their house not many months after coming home—he has a surviving brother and sister. He was overwhelmingly voted as the person who should be remembered in the town square, which will be named after him, which is lovely. I went to the opening of the memorial.
After developing somewhere on the high street to celebrate our local history and local heroes, North Shields now has a buzz about it. It looks good, and long may that continue. We have a shopping centre, the Beacon centre, from the town’s last revival 50 years ago, when I was in my teens—I keep wanting to think that it was only 40 years ago. [Laughter.] It is all right for you young ones.
I have always been proud of North Shields, and I have been saddened when our high street has not been able to thrive. I now see pride returning to the people of North Shields. People, young and old, are gathering, shopping and enjoying their high street. I hope this Bill can achieve for other town centres and high streets what North Shields has achieved by getting funding, and by people and communities working and coming together, to restore pride and interest in the town centre because of its thriving high street.
Darren Henry (Broxtowe) (Con)
High streets are essential to our towns. They act as social hubs for our communities, and they attract people, which results in money being spent in our local economies. Across the UK, we have all seen high streets decline over the last decade. This can be put down to multiple factors, such as online shopping, energy costs and the pandemic. All of these things, and more, have meant that high streets are becoming emptier, and towns are the worse for it.
Businesses on our high streets were put under huge strain during covid. We saw large amounts of ingenuity from many who had to adapt and change their business models to survive. I saw many local businesses start delivery services or create new products that had not previously existed. In many ways, people adapted to a brand-new situation to keep their businesses alive. However, many were also supported by Government grants, and I was extremely grateful for that support, which was received by many businesses throughout Broxtowe that might not be operating today without it.
We have seen the loss of vital services from many of our high streets. In 2019 I discovered that we were losing our banking services in Stapleford, when a constituent spoke to me in the street to ask what could be done. This would have been a huge loss to our town. Online banking can be great, but it is not for everyone, so it is important that physical banking services exist in our communities. I got to work to ensure that banking services would be available in our high street. I finally managed to find Cash Access UK, which has now opened a new banking hub where customers of major banks and building societies can carry out regular cash transactions. That was a win, but other local services will also disappear if we do not look after our high streets.
There are many high streets in my constituency, with a huge variety of chain stores and independent businesses. In 2021, following a period of lobbying the Government, Stapleford received £21.1 million as part of a town deal, and its main road, Derby Road, has already benefited hugely from that funding. Independent shops such as Rowells received some of it to renovate parts of their businesses. Rowells has been in the town for 126 years, and I had the honour of taking Chris and Donna, its owners, to No. 10 Downing Street to thank them for what they do for Stapleford.
Bake Me A Wish, which opened last year, is a local businesses whose owners began baking in their home in Chilwell during the covid-19 pandemic. Following covid, they decided to open a shop selling delicious cakes and pastries—I recommend their honey layer cake—in a now up-and-coming Stapleford town centre, with footfall rising and far fewer empty shops than we used to have. That demonstrates the difference that the town deal has made.
In another part of my constituency, Beeston, many small and independent businesses have served the community for far longer than I have been around. Fred Hallam, a grocer’s and fishmonger, has been present on the High Road since 1908. I have previously taken the now Prime Minister to Fred Hallam to show him how much value it brings to our local town, and why it is so important that such businesses have the Government’s support. Another local business on the High Road that the Prime Minister had the privilege of visiting is Hairven, a hair salon opened by my constituent Collette. Hairven is not only an important fixture in the town, but provides apprenticeships for young people starting their careers in the hair and beauty industry. I am incredibly proud of the work it does. As we so often say in the House, university is not for everyone, and this and many similar businesses are providing an essential service in offering apprenticeships.
We need to ensure that our high streets are offering services that cannot be obtained online. They can also be a social hub: coffee shops and other such venues often provide a place to go for people who may live alone or feel isolated. Enabling them to be around others and visit a venue where they can meet a friend can go a long way towards tackling the endemic of loneliness that we are coming to see. I have been proud to speak in the House on numerous occasions about the need to do more to tackle loneliness and isolation, and I believe that high streets are essential in doing so.
The availability of accommodation in town is a further way of making high streets busier, but towns will not draw in individuals without having a variety of businesses. We have become more used to seeing empty store fronts along our high streets, which is a very poor situation, and I am therefore delighted that the Government’s Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 allows local authorities to instigate high street rental auctions of properties that have been vacant for more than a year. It will be up to them whether they take up those powers, but I hope very much that that will be done in Broxtowe to ensure that all our high streets are as attractive as they can be to both locals and visitors. I would add that I am very keen to see more high street businesses taken on by younger generations. Broxtowe has a huge amount of young entrepreneurship, and I am keen to encourage younger people to take on the challenge of opening high street businesses and bringing a fresh perspective to our high streets. Perhaps this is something the Government could look at following the debate.
The Bill from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) is vital, as it requires that we do not let our high streets fall into disarray. It provides that local authorities must not merely review a high street every five years but actively lay out an improvement plan. That puts pressure on local authorities to ensure that our high streets are fit for local communities. I believe a large contributing factor to the amount of footfall on high streets is car parking. People can be hugely put off from visiting towns where they cannot park or where parking costs are extortionate. In Broxtowe we have had huge issues with parking. I implore our local council to do more to tackle this problem, as it has a huge impact on shops, business owners and local residents. It is essential that we have a car parking strategy in our town centres and ensure that throughout busy times of the day we have available and affordable parking for all.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South for bringing this Bill to the House. High streets are in decline, and once we lose many of their facilities, they will not return. I am very pleased to see this Bill introduced, so that we can take action now to save our high streets and ensure they return to the buzzing social hubs we once saw up and down the country, including in my constituency of Broxtowe.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) for this important private Member’s Bill. High streets are a fundamental part of any community, whether village, town or city—or two cities, in my case. They attract commercial activity to the centre, support the local economy and provide much-needed jobs for local people.
I welcome this Bill. By requiring local authorities to designate high streets in their area, publish reviews of their condition and develop action plans, it recognises the importance of enhancing our high streets. According to the Office for National Statistics, there are over 1,200 high streets in London alone, constituting almost 20% of the high streets we have in Great Britain. As Member of Parliament for the Cities of London and Westminster, I know the importance of the high street, as we are home to what is often referred to as the nation’s high street: Oxford Street. It may be only one and a half miles long, but before the pandemic the Oxford Street district alone generated £13 billion of GVA. To put that into context, that is 25% of the entirety of Wales’s GVA.
In central London, 25% of visitors are international, but they account for 50% of all spending. As Europe’s busiest shopping street, Oxford Street plays a key role in enticing these tourists to our country. Many visitors emphasise that tax rates play a role in their choice of destination. Many businesses in my constituency rely heavily on the revenue generated by international shoppers, yet since the abolition of tax-free shopping, we have seen a trend of these consumers choosing to take their business to other European capitals, such as Paris and Milan. We know that such visitors are spending less in the UK than in other European countries. We know that such visitors are spending less in the UK than in other European countries. In 2022, spending in the UK by American visitors reached 101% of 2019 levels, but in France it surged to 226% of 2019 levels. That data makes a clear point: we need a return of tax-free shopping. I have repeatedly made the case for introducing tax-free shopping to provide a needed boost to a wide range of businesses on high streets across the country.
We must also ensure that renowned British high streets such as Oxford Street retain their global status. As we have heard, shops on many local high streets are empty or closing—businesses have perhaps not survived the pandemic—and the same can be said of parts of Oxford Street. Up and down Oxford Street, there are now too many candy shops and vape shops. I understand that the landlords want rent to ensure that their property is a going business, but I am deeply disappointed that Westminster City Council has still not been able to deal with the plethora of candy shops on Oxford Street. Many of the tenants use shell companies, which is another reason we need an urgent review of Companies House—but I digress, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Of course, Oxford Street is not the only high street in the west end. We have what I like to call the trinity of Oxford Steet, Bond Street and Regent Street. All are situated in the west end and play an important part in the cultural and entertainment powerhouse that is central London. The trinity boasts some of the world’s most famous department stores, including Selfridges on Oxford Street, Liberty just off Regent Street and, of course, Hamleys, the world’s oldest toy shop, on Regent Street. Bond Street is home to some of the most famous luxury brands: Burberry, Chanel, Cartier, Dolce & Gabbana, Hermès, Jimmy Choo, Louis Vuitton, Mulberry, Ralph Lauren and Tiffany—I could go on.
The Bill goes to the heart of why we need to ensure the health of the local high street. An aspect that we tend to forget when it comes to the regeneration and protection of the high street is the role that business improvement districts play. In Cities of London and Westminster, BIDs play a massive part in ensuring that our high streets are used in the best possible capacity by making improvements to the public realm and enabling businesses to work together to ensure that the local high street is a going concern. In Westminster, we have a plethora of BIDs, including the New West End Company, the Heart of London Business Alliance, Northbank, Victoria, Baker Street Quarter, PaddingtonNow and Marble Arch London. In the City, we have Aldgate Connect, Fleet Street Quarter and many others. I pay respect to and thank the amazing Ruth Duston, the chief executive of an umbrella organisation that brings together a number of those BIDs. The difference that the BIDs have made to a swathe of high streets and commercial areas across my constituency is absolutely outstanding, and I thank Ruth for her service.
It is not just in the west end that the high street is important; the two cities are home to what I call villages or neighbourhoods: Elizabeth Street in Belgravia, Warwick Way in Pimlico, Berwick Street in Soho, Mount Street in Mayfair and, of course, Marylebone High Street—the high street for the village of Marylebone. All those neighbourhood high streets cater to residents and visitors alike, with their much-loved cafés and small businesses such as florists’, clothes shops, barbers, nail bars, grocers, bakers—you name it. Every one of our neighbourhood high streets has a small business, and behind those small businesses can be families. This Bill will do so much to support family-run businesses.
We have already heard today the huge part that our high streets play, whether in the capital city, an area like Stoke-on-Trent or anywhere. They can often make a village, a town or a neighbourhood in a city a special place to live for residents, including me. I am delighted to live in the village of Pimlico, where we have a whole number of brilliant local shops, restaurants and family-run businesses.
Mary Glindon
It is important that people can live near the high street, and building houses on land that becomes available is so important for footfall. Does the hon. Lady agree?
Nickie Aiken
The hon. Lady is right, and what she says relates to an important point about the regeneration of our high streets. We have to have people around high streets to use them and to benefit from the facilities and the services that they offer. That is one aspect I looked at in the regeneration of Oxford Street when I was the leader of Westminster City Council. We were looking at changes to our planning policy, because we know that with the changes in people’s behaviour with online shopping, not as many people are now coming to buy. They may come in to browse, but they do not necessarily buy. That is why I consider that for somewhere like Oxford Street, we should protect the ground floor in particular, and perhaps the first floor and the basement, for retail. Above that, often there are five or six floors. Shops such as John Lewis and House of Fraser as was do not need all that huge floor space any more, because of the changes in behaviour. I was more than happy to look at introducing residential aspects or hotels.
I thought that if we could have residential in Oxford Street, the type of people who would live there, on a high street, would not necessarily be families or older couples. It would be somewhere that young professionals, students or whoever would live, and they want access to retail at all hours of the day, restaurants, cafes and whatever. The hon. Lady makes a good point that we need to look at residential aspects, but we do not want to turn our high streets just into residential areas. We need that commercial zone, but local authorities need to box clever when they are considering not only how they can help the existing small businesses in their high streets, but also how to attract new ones in.
The Government are committed to supporting retail businesses of all sizes. Investment has been made in the high street through the £4.8 billion levelling-up fund, as well as the future high streets fund, which is worth £830 million. These initiatives help boost our local economies by creating more jobs and homes, while improving skills and infrastructure. We also had Government support worth £373 billion to the economy during the pandemic. We must never forget how much support this Government gave to secure hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country during the pandemic.
As I said earlier, online shopping continues to grow. The retail sector in high streets suffers from that. We saw that through the pandemic, and it continues to grow. Indeed, it is now easier than ever to shop online, with next-day delivery and free returns. There is less of a need for people to visit the high street to buy an outfit for that special occasion or the important interview they have coming up. This evolution of shopping is having an impact on the high street. Footfall is in decline, and the sector is grappling with a seismic shift in consumer habits. I therefore welcome the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, which gets to the crux of the issue. It is important that we support our high streets in the evolution that is happening as we speak. As I said in my intervention, I fully support how the Bill puts an onus on local authorities to step up and protect their local streets in the face of changing customer behaviour.
Although it is true that my constituency is home to many thriving high streets, we cannot ignore the significant change in how we use our high streets today. As I mentioned, the candy stores on Oxford Street are a problem, and I really hope that Westminster Council will sort that out. It is becoming an increasingly common problem around the country when landlords want to secure as much rent as they can—that is understandable—but that demonstrates how we need to adopt a long-term approach to ensure that our high streets can thrive in a sustainable way. The Bill promises to do exactly that by presenting an opportunity to push local authorities to better use the tools they have to address these problems. As I said, the Bill will allow the residents of the town, the city or the area to hold their local authority to account and have a say, and if they are not happy with what their local council is doing, perhaps they could even vote out their council.
One way in which I have seen the issue successfully tackled is by changing the use of properties from shops to activity-based venues. As I said, I had the idea of perhaps attracting more residential use into parts of Oxford Street, but, just down from here on Victoria Street, two units that I think were previously a clothes shop and a restaurant have reopened as a bowling alley and a karaoke bar. Now, that might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but I have to say that I have partaken in the bowling alley activity; I took my team there last week. I will not give hon. Members the results of the competition, but I did not do very well.
There are also wider concerns about rising crime levels on our high streets. Shoplifting is at eye-watering levels. Late last year, I joined local people on a walkabout on Marylebone High Street and was shocked and appalled to hear that an increase in shoplifting has led several retail stores to lock their doors and allow people in only if they know who they are. I spoke to shop managers, particularly of clothes shops—those shops’ staff and managers tend to be women—who were very concerned about their own safety. People were coming in, grabbing clothes off the rails and running out.
We have heard a report today on the BBC about shoplifting in Manchester and the real threats that local shop staff face on a daily basis. Local people have reported that Waitrose on Marylebone High Street has removed products such as alcohol from its shelves to protect itself from being targeted by organised crime. It is often organised gangs who are involved in the dreadful crime of shoplifting. We call it shoplifting, but we should call it retail theft, because shoplifting does not really get to the crux of how it is theft, often with the threat of violence. We need to take it more seriously.
According to the Metropolitan police service, Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street were hit by nearly 18,500 crimes in the year to July 2023, and more than 80% of the area’s crimes that year were theft. Police and crime prevention are key to preserving and enhancing the character of our high streets. I welcome the fact that the Government have prioritised the safety of our high streets and policing with their retail crime action plan and the safer streets fund. However, it is clear that our local authorities need to do more to support those efforts and I hope this Bill will help in that process.
Through this Bill, local authorities will be encouraged to work more with local businesses and stakeholders on our high streets to develop new ideas, to encourage growth and to tackle the obstacles facing our high streets today. I therefore welcome the Bill and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South for introducing it. It presents an ambitious and necessary plan to reawaken our local high streets and bring them roaring back to life so that they can better serve our local communities and boost our economy by attracting more visitors.
Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I very much welcome this Bill and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) on getting it this far and on advocating so passionately for our high streets. This Bill, which requires local authorities to designate streets in their area as high streets and develop an improvement plan, especially without that upper limit of three streets that can be designated as high streets, will provide a framework for our many local authorities to do more to support this important part of what my hon. Friend called the beating heart of our communities. He is absolutely right to term it in that way.
It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken). I was particularly struck by her drawing out of the concept of neighbourhood high streets. Although she obviously represents a far more urbanised area than I do, in my constituency we have both a town centre and other neighbourhood high streets, which need the support and help of our local authority just as the town centre does. That is an important thing to think about as this plan goes forward, and I am sure the Minister will reflect on that in his comments.
A picture has been painted already of the importance of high streets, so I will simply add that a recent poll found that 80% of respondents thought it very important that their high street was kept alive and healthy. That said, our town centres are incredibly fragile at the moment and they do need more protection. I think this Bill will incentivise local authorities to do the right thing and to have plans in place.
The economic benefits of town centres to our local economies are huge and considerable. Certainly in Basingstoke my town centre and high street service and support one of the largest centres of employment in the south-east. Not only residents but workers who come to Basingstoke, day in, day out use it. Town centres and high streets in our town centres promote civic pride and social cohesion and, as the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) said, they are places where we gather. That is an important part of their role as well.
However, high streets and town centres face considerable challenges, which is why I am speaking in support of this Bill today. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster referred to shoplifting, and I think every hon. Member taking part in this debate will recognise the incredible way in which shoplifting has been turned into, frankly, organised crime. Individuals are organising themselves to go into shops regularly to steal large quantities of often high-value items.
I am pleased to say that the police and crime commissioner in my county of Hampshire, Donna Jones, has gone above and beyond in addressing the issue of shoplifting, particularly by supporting facial recognition technology, which will help our local retailers on our high streets immensely to do something about that appalling crime. She has reinstated the important beat bobbies in every single one of my communities—not just in Basingstoke, but throughout Hampshire—and made sure that they will be there to collect the evidence and intelligence on the gangs and individuals organising shoplifting. The police forces in our various parts of the country have an important role to play in the future health of our high streets. I know my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South will be looking for ways to ensure that they are absolutely at the heart of his Bill, so that our high streets are healthy for the future.
As has been said, the reality for many retailers and service providers is that what they traditionally offered face to face can now—perhaps more conveniently for some—be purchased or procured online. Shopping habits and consumer behaviour were already changing before the pandemic, but the change has accelerated enormously, forcing our high streets to think carefully about their role in the future. It is not just retail parks that are a threat to the future of our high streets; it is more fundamental than that, so it will be important that local authorities take consumers’ and shoppers’ behaviour into account when they look at the Bill as it is rolled out.
My “high street” in Basingstoke—the town centre is a network of streets and one very large shopping centre—has been considering this issue for a number of years. Back in 2021, thanks to the leadership of then council leader Simon Minas-Bound, we put in place a blueprint for our town centre that is very similar to what my hon. Friend is calling for in his Bill. It was approved in December 2022 under the then Conservative administration. It is called the “Town Centre Strategy”, and it is designed to attract more footfall to the town centre, based on changing consumer needs. It looks at how the environment can bring greater vibrancy, and therefore greater prosperity, to the town centre. The strategy was developed with extensive public engagement: there were more than 3,000 responses to the consultation. The masterplan that has been developed uses the historical layout of Basingstoke to reimagine the current town centre, not for the next five or 10 years, but for the next 30 years, so that our town is fit for the future.
That town centre plan must look at the heritage of our community. I felt it was important, at the heart of the future of Basingstoke, to recognise our incredible history. Jane Austen, the novelist, used to go shopping in Basingstoke, and I was very pleased to work with a number of local people, including the sculptor Adam Roud, to put a lasting memorial in my town centre to that incredible Hampshire citizen. The hon. Member for North Tyneside talked about remembering one of the sons of her community, and I made sure we were remembering one of our daughters. Jane Austen is a fantastic person to have as part of our history.
There is also the Willis Museum and Sainsbury Gallery and the marketplace. All that history and richness has to be central to the way we press forward with Basingstoke. Consumers’ changing needs and demands mean that they may not go to their local high street only to shop, even though we continue to value the independent retailers and the pubs and clubs that populate our town centre. They are also looking for experiences and entertainment, and our history will enable us to make a unique entertainment offer in our town centre.
I absolutely agree that this Bill promotes a way for our local authorities to ensure that they do the utmost to support our high streets and make the most of them as a way of creating successful communities for the future. It will put the beating heart into our communities, and I very much commend my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South for all the work he has done to bring forward the Bill.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to respond to the debate and we have heard a number of interesting and broad perspectives from Members of all parties. I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) for tabling the Bill and for working constructively with Members from across the House, with the many stakeholders who inevitably had a view and with the Department so that the Bill gained Government support. He described high streets as the beating heart of our communities, and that was an absolutely apposite description. I agreed when he talked about Members of Parliament having a leadership role in guiding their communities and making sure that they are fit for the future, and he drew attention to a very sensible amendment that added greater flexibility so that a collection of streets, rather than one street, could be determined by a local authority as a high street.
Recalling what the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) said about the historical elements of high streets, I want to reflect on my own town centre in Ellesmere Port, which is, of course, the one I know best. The original town centre was somewhere different to where it is today. It has been moving westwards and southwards over the years, but a number of important historic buildings remain in the older parts of the town that need a focus as well.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South also made an important point about how antisocial behaviour can be a blight on town centres and the important role of the police and other authorities in tackling it. He mentioned gating off alleyways, which has been a successful policy in my constituency. There is also a worry that it tends to move challenges and problems around rather than dealing with them entirely, but that is why enforcement is so important in such matters. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke gave an important perspective and articulated well the importance of crime prevention in making sure our high streets are attractive and welcoming places for people to visit.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) gave us a glowing gallop through her part of the world and spoke with great local knowledge and pride about North Shields. She was right that the key to all this is how we bring communities together. Her particular point about how town centres used to be the place where people would see friends once a week on a Saturday afternoon speaks to the challenge. Of course, thanks to the internet and mobile phones, we can pretty much speak to anyone we want to at any point, at any time of the day, from anywhere in the world, so the importance of that central meeting point in a community has diminished in recent years. My hon. Friend also spoke glowingly about the work her council does, and I think most councils work well within their limitations in trying to breathe life into their high streets.
Councils certainly have an important role as, for want of a better description, anchor tenants in the town centre. My council has made a strategic decision to base its headquarters for the whole of Cheshire West in Ellesmere Port, which has resulted in a certain critical mass of people coming into the town. My hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside also talked about the importance of public toilets. We sometimes overlook that, but we need to be confident that there is somewhere we can escape to in an emergency. It is also important to pay tribute to the council workers whose job it is to make sure that those toilets are clean and in good working order, because, as we know, from time to time they can attract the wrong sort of attention. It is important that we acknowledge the role of the entire public sector in making sure that our town centres are clean and inviting places. I know that my community in particular has a has a lot of respect for Bernie, who spends every day trundling up and down Ellesmere Port high street, making sure that the streets are clean and tidy. He is well respected and admired for that because, rain or shine, he is always there doing that important role.
The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Darren Henry) gave an important perspective when he talked about the impact of the withdrawal of banks from many communities. I congratulate him on his success bringing back some of that facility. I am afraid there has been a national exodus from the high street. I have spoken on other occasions about the importance of having a physical presence for important services such as banking, because some people will not want to or be able to deal with a computer. When talking about financial transactions, the security of a face-to-face interaction is important to people.
The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken), perhaps understandably, had a different perspective about the importance of international shoppers to the high streets in her constituency. She identified a shared problem of all high streets: the rise of online shopping, which has made it much more of a challenge to attract people. It is great that we can now order anything we want at any time of day, and it will be on our doorstep probably the next day, but that has not come without downsides. That is why the hon. Lady’s point about a need for a broader approach to the high street was important, as was her discussion about residential and activity-based destinations. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke had a neat way of expressing that as experiences and entertainment—something that we all seek on a regular basis.
All Members spoke with great passion and sincerity about the challenges facing their high streets. It would be fair to say that there has been a decline in our town centres in recent years. Many are blighted by boarded-up outlets and pavements verging on empty. It is hard to escape a wider sense of malaise because, in many respects, town centres and high streets are the faces of the places that residents and visitors see on a daily basis. They are the individual identity of the area for those who work, socialise or shop there.
That importance has been reflected in studies conducted into the value of high streets to local people. Nationwide found in 2020 that more than seven in 10 people felt that their local high street was an important part of their community, but almost two thirds of people thought that high streets have been neglected and more than two thirds believed that they have fallen into decline. I am sure that those figures will be even higher in some constituencies.
Shop closures in recent years speak for themselves. The British Retail Consortium estimated last year that Britain had lost 6,000 retail outlets since 2018. That translates into vacancy rates that are unequally spread across the country and the type of shopping area. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) noted on Second Reading that the loss of shops was more pronounced in the north-east, where the vacancy rate is nearly a fifth, compared to a rate of one in 10 in the south of England.
A similar pattern is noticeable in the type of vacant shopping outlets. According to the Local Data Company, in the final quarter of 2023 high streets and shopping centres had vacancy rates of 14% and 17.9% respectively, yet retail parks had a vacancy rate of only 7.6%. That experience is mirrored in Ellesmere Port, where we have the high street, Port Arcades in the town centre, and we also have Cheshire Oaks as the out-of-town retail destination.
We have all seen the big names go and the shift away from in-person banking in our town centres, which has accelerated the decline that we all have been talking about. It is of note that the footfall in high streets last year was still 10% less than before the pandemic. That trend has a potential compounding effect on high streets and town centres, as the businesses that remain are harmed by the diversion of local people to alternative areas. It can be increasingly difficult on the back of that to attract new investment. There are huge challenges ahead to break the cycle of decline, and I see these trends in my constituency: where once we had a bustling town centre and big-name stores on every corner as well as an arcade full of shops, we now have far more empty shops and therefore fewer people coming to the town centre. What was once a lively place is now, sadly, looking a little empty.
People want to have pride in their towns and when they see boarded-up shops and empty streets they feel that something has gone amiss, so I can see the good intentions from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South in bringing this Bill forward. I think we all agree that something needs to be done to support our local communities and get them back to how we remember them—bustling, lively and full of energy and economic activity. However, the Bill also implicitly suggests the approach so far from the Government is not delivering the kind of changes we want. There is little indication that we are reversing the decline over recent years despite the many schemes launched by the Government —the strategy for high street regeneration, the future high streets fund, the high streets heritage action zones, the high streets task force, and most recently the long-term plan for towns and the high street accelerators. If all those schemes had been a success, we might not have needed this Bill now, but they are limited to specific areas or times and require competitive bidding processes, which, as the Public Accounts Committee has noted, have so far failed to deliver anything of note.
This Bill adopts a different approach, creating a duty on all local authorities to designate their high streets and create improvement plans, meaning in theory at least that all areas will be placed on an equal footing. These plans will set out proposals for the preservation and enhancement of designated high streets, with councils required to review them every five years and consider them when exercising planning functions. And as we heard from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, this will be a rolling review, and that is right: we should not let these plans just remain in stasis, because the retail environment is challenging and ever-changing.
It is refreshing that it is recognised that local authorities are the best vehicle to make decisions about their local areas. However, more needs to be done to tackle the problems our high streets face, because after a high street is identified and an improvement plan is made there appears to be no mechanism for the allocation of resources to ensure these plans are implemented. Given that council budgets have been stretched to breaking point since 2010, I see little scope for any improvement in the foreseeable future.
It would be useful to understand when the Minister responds what steps will be taken to ensure that local authorities are supported to deliver on the ambitions that we all share to regenerate our high streets. He made the important point on Second Reading that these plans should not be left to gather dust on the shelf, so what mechanisms does he envisage being made available to ensure there is real delivery of these plans? I hope—perhaps he will be able to explain and answer this—that the delivery of the plans will not depend upon councils having successful bids from whatever the next iteration is of the levelling-up fund and that there will actually be five-year investment programmes set out from central Government to match the plans. The reality is that any Government focus, however small, on regenerating high streets is to be welcomed, but much more needs to be done.
The most effective way of delivering substantial improvement to our high streets and cities across the country is not just through plans dictated from central Government, but through devolution and local government liberation. This will hand authorities, who have a much better understanding of the conditions on the ground, the right tools to make the right interventions for their local area. We support this Bill, but we also recognise that much more needs to be done to deliver the change we all want to see.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) for his leadership on this very important and worthwhile private Member’s Bill, and for his unwavering commitment and efforts to champion our high streets.
This has been a fantastic debate. We have learnt a lot about the heritage of different high streets: Thomas Brown Street, in the constituency of the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon), was named in honour of the world war two hero who retrieved the enigma codes at sea; the 800-year-old high street in Basingstoke was the home of the author Jane Austen; the 126 years of Rowells in Stapleford; and the most famous high street in the world, Oxford Street, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken). We also heard about the towns fund in Broxtowe, which has given £21.1 million to Stapleford, and the transforming cities fund in North Tyneside, which has contributed towards its new transport hub and piazza. Sadly, we did not hear from the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) about the levelling-up fund, which has given £13.4 million to transform Ellesmere Port town centre.
As we heard in the debate, everyone here recognises that healthy and vibrant high streets are vital not only for local economies, but for the quality of life and pride of local communities. However, the challenges currently faced by our high streets are significant, whether from the lingering impact of covid-19 on footfall or the ever-present challenge of competition with online retailers. While some have been able to weather the storm, many have struggled. The Government are committed to working with local communities to help turn that around. The Bill will play an important role in that mission, alongside other Government interventions, as part of our broader strategy to help high streets reinvent themselves. They include injecting billions of pounds into high street regeneration and renewal, including the long-term plan for towns, which will invest £1.5 billion across 75 towns to give them the tools they need to build a better future for local people.
One of the towns selected as part of our long-term plan for towns is Canvey, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris). Canvey, like all the 75 towns in our long-term plan for towns, will receive £20 million over the next 10 years to invest in local people’s priorities. I take this opportunity to thank my hon. Friend, who has for so long championed the people of Canvey Island. Without her advocacy and brilliant campaigning, we would not be able to give them that £20 million cash.
Our long-term plan for towns will sit alongside high street rental auctions, which will require landlords to rent out vacant commercial properties to willing tenants such as local businesses. That will help to create lively high streets with increased footfall. Of course, no high street is the same, with local areas best placed to find solutions to local problems, which is why strong local partnerships on the ground are key to successful regeneration. We want to support councils, local businesses and local communities to give them the resources and powers they need. I think of high streets in my own constituency, such as those in Redcar, Marske, Eston or Normanby.
Normanby is probably the smallest of the towns I have just mentioned. At the moment, it is beset with roadworks that are expected to continue for around three months. That is already having a huge impact on local businesses. It is important, obviously, that when local authorities plan such major roadworks, they give serious consideration to the damage they can do to local businesses. Mr Deputy Speaker, I cannot mention Normanby High Street without thinking of the late Kenny Surtees, who for as long I can remember had a card shop on that street. I think he would have had a few choice things to say to the local Teesside Gazette about how those roadworks are going.
The Government recognise that many local authorities have regeneration strategies already in place, but the Bill will make the designation of high streets and the creation of high street improvement plans a statutory requirement. That will ensure local authorities not only prioritise the health of their high streets, but use their available powers to drive forward improvements, such as section 215 powers, to require land to be cleaned up when it is detracting from the surroundings.
The Bill will require each local authority to designate at least one high street or network of streets in their area. Local authorities will be able to designate as many high streets as they want. However, the Government have committed to funding the costs of up to three high street designations. Any designation beyond that number would have to be funded by the local authority itself. Local authorities will then have to create plans for the designated high streets, which should be reviewed at least every five years. Local residents, businesses, community organisations and others, including Members of Parliament, will rightly have a real say on the action plans, and the local authority will be accountable for delivering them.
Accordingly, the Bill will require local authorities to consult on which high streets are chosen. Different areas will have different challenges, so the improvements we can expect to see will vary. The focus in one area might be on tackling antisocial behaviour—again, something we have heard about in the debate, and we have heard some fantastic examples of what police and crime commissioners are doing to tackle it—while in others it could be creating more green spaces to rest and socialise. What is crucial, however, is flexibility to ensure that local authorities have the agency to enact the best change for their area.
The Bill will also create a duty on local authorities to take into account high street improvement plans when exercising their planning functions. That will support the already strong protections for mixed-use high streets and the complementing tools available to authorities, such as changes to the use classes order in 2020 to create the commercial, business and service use class—class E.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank hon. Members for their suggestions for strengthening the Bill during its passage through the House. We worked with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South to make some small amendments in Committee so that the Bill is as effective as possible. Those changes included ensuring that local authorities can make as many high street designations as they wish, with the Government funding up to three of those designations. That will give local authorities with a large number of high streets the flexibility needed to designate more than three, if they desire. I note my hon. Friend’s point that Stoke-on-Trent is a city of six towns, so there will clearly be more than three high streets that the local authority might want to intervene in.
We have also updated the wording of the Bill to allow for the designation of a network of streets, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston, as the Government recognise that high streets are complex ecosystems that are not always limited to one street, but could be made up of a network of connecting streets.
Additionally, the Bill now sets out that local authorities must review their improvement plans at least once in every five-year period, with guidance to follow up on the circumstances in which local authorities should consider undertaking a review, such as where the area of the designated high street is expanded or reduced. That will ensure that plans remain meaningful and relevant. Following Royal Assent, we will issue guidance on developing the improvement plans.
The Government recognise that local authorities are best placed to know what their high street improvement plans should cover. Officials in my Department have already begun outreach with local authorities on the guidance and will continue to work with local authorities and other stakeholders as the guidance is developed. It is important that the plans are not left to gather dust but remain constantly relevant, as the hon. Gentleman reminded us. That is why the Bill requires local authorities to update their plans at least every five years, which we believe strikes the right balance between giving the plans enough time to have a meaningful effect and ensuring that they remain relevant to the reinvigoration of our high streets. We recognise that the measures should not come at the cost of overburdening councils that are already under pressure. As I have already mentioned, we will ensure that local authorities have the extra funding they need to be able to deliver the measures in the Bill effectively.
I am grateful that proposed new clause 1 was not moved on Report, as it would have removed all permitted development rights, not just those that change the use from commercial to residential lettings. I appreciate that that is a challenge in the constituency of the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), and I note that the LGA has echoed her concerns. I will meet both of them as the Bill progresses to understand the issues further and see what can be done to mitigate them.
As already stated, the Bill forms one part of a broader strategy to help regenerate and level up our high streets. Part of the solution is funding, with the Government investing billions of pounds into helping high streets navigate the difficult environment they face. The latest of that funding is the £1.5 billion long-term plan for towns, which will power ambitious regeneration projects over the next decade.
However, it is not simply about funding. With the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, we gave local authorities new powers to reduce vacancies in their high streets through high street rental auctions. That will help to create lively high streets with increased footfall and activity that attracts people and businesses, increases pride in place and avoids the long-term presence of vacancies.
The development of strong partnerships, be it between national and local government, or between local businesses and communities, will be vital to the regeneration of our high streets. One such partnership is the high street accelerator programme, which I have the pleasure of leading and which will bring together businesses, residents and community organisations, with their local authority, to develop a long-term vision for revitalising town centres.
In addition, we have introduced significant planning flexibilities so that local decision makers can better manage the use of buildings in town centres and ensure that high streets remain places of commercial and social activity. That includes by converting class E properties; allowing a change of use without the need for individual planning applications; and using permitted development rights to introduce movable structures in pubs, cafés and restaurants, and to allow local authorities to hold outdoor markets. Permitted development also provides freedom to change more premises from commercial to residential use, so that much-needed new homes can be created in high streets and town centres, providing a mix of users, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster led on during her time as leader of Westminster City Council.
Alongside that, as I have mentioned, we are investing in our high streets across the country, with £15 billion of levelling-up funding since 2019 going to communities the length and breadth of the UK, including in Hyndburn and Haslingden, where my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe) has secured more than £50 million for her area. She has undoubtedly been the best MP that her constituency has had. I was pleased to visit it recently to see the historic town hall and the plans for the market hall, where, before serving as the MP, she used to have a stall, if I recall correctly. She is a brilliant champion for her constituents and I am pleased that we are able to help support her area.
Another area we are supporting is Nuneaton, which is also significantly benefiting from Government funding. I know that is particularly welcomed by the Deputy Chief Whip, my right hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones). It is receiving a town deal worth more than £23 million and future high streets funding of more than £13 million, thanks to his advocacy. As part of that funding, we will help to build Grayson Place, which is named after Nuneaton’s famous Larry Grayson. His famous phrase, “Shut that door!”, has a particular significance for me as the MP for Redcar. This is disputed by the Deputy Chief Whip, but the first time Larry Grayson said that was when he was doing a tour in Redcar and the wind from the seafront kept banging the door on Redcar pier—he said “Shut that door!” and so it became. I hope that the good people of Nuneaton will use their vote next week to back their fantastic Conservative council to finish the job and continue to improve their area.
Of course, I could not omit to mention Stoke-on-Trent, which has had not one, not two, but three successful bids for levelling-up funding, as well as a levelling-up partnership, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South is keen to see investment in Longton. Stoke-on-Trent has never had such a focus from any Government, and I credit him for all his campaigning as a great MP over the past seven years.
To conclude, this Government are fully committed to breathing new life into our high streets, whether that is through the long-term plan for towns, the high street rental auctions or this Bill. Like my hon. Friend, I appreciate just how much this matters to the communities that we represent. Again, I offer my gratitude to him for introducing this Bill, to the Members who have supported it throughout the entirety of its Commons stages, to the Clerks and to my fab team of officials, who have helped with the Bill. I also pay tribute to the many fantastic council officers, who are often unnamed and unknown but who work day in, day out to improve their communities. The Government are backing this Bill and backing our high streets to navigate this period of change and emerge stronger for it. I look forward to supporting the Bill from the sidelines as it progresses through the other place and eagerly anticipate its becoming law.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
If there is a Division later, perhaps after 10 minutes I should say, in Larry Grayson’s memory, “Lock that door!” I might give it a go. [Laughter.] With the leave of the House, I call Jack Brereton.
Jack Brereton
With the leave of the House, let me say that we have had a fantastic and fulsome debate. I thank colleagues across the House for their contributions, particularly the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon), who referred to the impact of the transforming cities fund on her constituency. We have had similar in Longton in my constituency, and I am grateful for the funding for new lifts at Longton station
I thank the Minister for all the support he has given to my Bill. He has been doing an incredible job in the Department.
I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Darren Henry) for his support. He rightly referred to the importance of our high streets as social and service hubs. I was not thinking of Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana and Tiffany when I first introduced the Bill but, all the same, I very much appreciate the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken). Finally, I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) for highlighting how our high streets matter to all our communities.
I hope the Bill will continue to proceed in the other place and become an Act of Parliament as soon as possible.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill
Monday 29th April 2024
(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 26 April 2024 - (26 Apr 2024)
High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill
Friday 17th May 2024
(6 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 26 April 2024 - (26 Apr 2024)
Lord Whitby (Con)
My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I move the Second Reading of the High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill. It has already received cross-party support in another place, and I am keen and confident that it will receive an equally positive reception in your Lordships’ House. It is a necessary Bill to maximise the chances of high street renewal with the assistance of local communities and the support of central government under the leadership of informed and empowered local authorities. I happily declare something of an interest in this as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
I am a proud champion of what is termed “muscular localism” by my honourable friend Jack Brereton, the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, who has ably taken this Bill through another place. He and I, who between us have considerable local government experience, share a passion for active local government working in dynamic partnership with local businesses and communities. In Birmingham I was proud to play a leadership role in commissioning and developing the internationally acclaimed and award-winning Big City Plan, which aimed to shape and revitalise Birmingham city centre, putting the city’s sustainability, culture, creativity, technology and enterprise at the heart of its future plans, innovating the transport and street scene, attracting £14 billion of committed private sector funding and building upon our historic successes, not least in preserving and enhancing the Jewellery Quarter as a place of active manufacturing, artistry and craft. Importantly, it meant rescuing the Bullring from the concrete cage and reviving it as a prosperous, accessible and welcoming marketing and retail area.
What we learned as we progressed with our compelling vision was that others quickly bought into what we wanted to be and wanted to be part of that journey, so we were able to preserve and enhance the iconic Rotunda—I am grateful to Urban Splash, which came on board thanks to the framework and clear sense of direction that we had given—but, equally, we invited partnerships with an openness to ideas in delivering the overall imperative of Birmingham living up to its civic motto, “Forward”.
It is because of the lessons I learned as a champion and practitioner of informed, active and collaborative local leadership that I am passionate about getting this Bill into statute. It comes with money attached. Those with local government experience will know that this is not always the case when government asks things of local government. Crucially, it comes with a duty on the Secretary of State to do a lot of legwork for local government in collating and crafting guidance from across all government departments and utilising national data resources and best practice lessons from past high street schemes.
This means that much smaller authorities than Birmingham can access the kind of expertise that we in Birmingham had the wherewithal to commission separately. It means that the lessons from the Government’s high streets task force, which has helped numerous councils of all colours, can be shared with all local authorities in a one-stop shop of government guidance.
The same will be true of lessons from the levelling-up fund, the towns fund, the future high streets fund, high street heritage action zones and many more. All of them are commendable and helpful for the authorities that have enjoyed them, but they all need to have their lessons institutionalised for all authorities so they can share that best practice.
It will ensure that councils are fully aware of the range of powers available to them and of their usefulness, including perhaps unfamiliar ones such as rental auctions, from the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. The Bill will share best practice, and I emphasise that it is about guidance, not prescription.
The support of the Government is imperative, but the Bill recognises the important role of local government, the vital contribution of localism and the mutually beneficial rewards of good public-private partnerships. Everyone recognises the challenges that our high streets face. The long-term rise of out-of-town and online shopping and of online banking, taken together with the short-term crisis of the Covid lockdowns, has changed what high streets can be. It is no longer an option to tread water and hope that something turns up. There needs to be active planning and, in some cases, enforcement. High streets blighted by low footfall and vacant properties accelerate that decline—and decline has proved to be the perfect ground for anti-social behaviour, which in turn keeps more and more local people and outside visitors away from our high streets.
The Bill will require all local authorities in England to designate at least one street, or a network of streets if appropriate, as a high street in their area, and to develop improvement plans for the designated streets. There will be no upper limit on how many streets a local authority can designate. As some local authorities will have a larger number of high streets, as we have in Birmingham, it will be important for councils, local authorities and communities to have flexibility around where they focus their efforts. However, I must reiterate that government funding for drawing up improvement plans will be limited to three high streets per authority.
Once in place, improvement plans will need to be reviewed at least once every five years. Our high streets need to be dynamic places, and the improvement plans will need to be dynamic too. Indeed, while most local authorities will likely work to the five-year period, it might be that some local authorities will more regularly consider whether the plans need updating or refreshing. For example, there is a material change in the make-up of the high street where a new opportunity comes along. I repeat that the Rotunda in Birmingham was saved and vastly improved because of an unpredicted scheme coming forward that was inspired by the predictable development impetus of the Big City Plan. Strategic plans are a magnet for outside interest and inward investment.
Consultation will play a key role in the development of the improvement plans, with local authorities required to consult on the designation of high streets as well as on the plans themselves. The process of designating high streets and creating improvement plans will likely be just as important as the plan itself, because the plans will be the result of robust consultation and conversation between local communities, local businesses, property owners, including places of worship, and local authorities, ensuring community buy-in and support for their particular designated plan.
The Bill will also interact with the planning system, as local planning authorities will have to take into account the relevant high street improvement plans when making planning decisions. Further details will be for the Secretary of State to set out in the guidance, but it is intended that the process should be as streamlined as possible, under efficient guidance and support, to ensure that no net burden is added to the planning system.
There can be no doubt of the pressure currently faced by local authorities up and down the country, and I appreciate that the fear is that an additional and time-consuming task will be required of them. But, actually, the Bill will help to provide a predictable policy framework and a pool of information and best practice that will improve the efficient focus of existing workstreams. That is exactly what the improvement plans will be: a framework and an accelerated journey towards best practice.
There will be an expression of local will that external parties, such as private enterprises, will be able to see clearly and act on. This will help facilitate public-private partnerships, which are key for growth. I know this from the experience of putting together Birmingham’s Big City Plan, which combined the best of the public and private sectors to better the lives of the people of Birmingham. And, of course, in supporting this Private Member’s Bill, the Government have shown a commitment to funding the improvement plans for up to three designated high streets.
It is not just about cost. Clearly fiscal wherewithal is crucial, but it is about local authorities having the agency and flexibility to drive informed change in their local area and benefiting their local communities. The Bill and the guidance that will follow will be just that—flexible and informed—and will give the information and flexibility to local authorities to drive forward the change that our areas need, recognising that the needs of one place will be different from the needs of another, while emphasising the need to develop a compelling sense of place, anchored in the points of difference that make each of our high streets special and attractive and dear to us all. One improvement plan may focus on cultural assets, others on shop-based artisan manufacturing, while others might focus on improving footfall and dwell time for the local visitor economy.
The Bill builds on work already delivered by central and local government to address the decline of our high streets, making sure that local authorities have the comprehensive strategies in place to regenerate their high streets with community support, while ensuring that they effectively use the powers that are already at their disposal. The Bill will be another tool in the armoury of local authorities to drive forward high street regeneration. It provides businesses and enterprising souls with a magnet, a predictable framework and a clear signal that unpredicted offers are welcome for collaborative and dynamic partnership work. I beg to move.
Viscount Hanworth (Lab)
My Lords, I should begin by mentioning that I am a current member of the Built Environment Committee, which is engaged in considering the state of Britain’s high streets.
The Bill that we are discussing today has excellent intentions and I strongly support it. It proposes that local authorities should have a watching brief over the health and development of a high street in their area and that they should have a development plan that should be reviewed at least every five years. At the best of times, this requirement should serve to reaffirm the good practices that one would expect well-run local authorities to be adopting as a matter of course. However, nowadays is not the best of times, and the authorities will struggle to fulfil the injunctions of the Bill in meaningful ways. Many of them lack the personnel to conduct proper appraisals of local problems and to formulate plans to address them.
There was a time when local authorities could be expected to react with enthusiasm to this Bill. They were endowed with planning departments that typically contained a full complement of architects, surveyors, town planners and other professionals, and they were responsible for, among other concerns, overseeing the stock of council housing and adding to it. Such housing provided shelter for a large proportion of the population.
The policy that gave the right to buy to council tenants was initiated in 1982 during the Thatcher era. It divested the authorities of much of this housing stock, and they were prevented from replenishing it. The planning departments lost much of their personnel and their sense of initiative.
The present Government have aimed numerous poorly funded initiatives at addressing the decline of the town centres and high streets. Many of these fall under the so-called levelling-up agenda. The current web page of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which is from July 2023, lists a bewildering variety of funds aimed at urban regeneration. I have counted 15 of them. The overview on the web page states:
“In the Levelling Up White Paper, the government committed to setting out a plan for simplifying and streamlining the funding landscape and to help local stakeholders navigate funding opportunities”.
This testifies to the difficulties and expenses incurred by local authorities in making applications for funding.
A common testimony of local authorities is that insufficient resources are available for developing a bid, which may be accompanied by a judgment that it is not worth their while to do so. Even if these impediments were overcome and if the money for regeneration were amply available, a more fundamental impediment could block the progress. Local authorities lack sufficient influence over the activities in high streets to address the problems of urban regeneration.
Few occupants of commercial town centre properties are also their owners. A figure of 12.8% has been cited for the proportion of private individual landlords and owner-occupiers. The ownership of the majority of properties resides in the portfolios of real estate investment trusts and other private interest companies, such as insurance and pension funds, where individual properties feature as lines on a spreadsheet.
The rent payable to owners places a heavy burden on the retailers. The burden is heaviest in times of economic recession when the income from trading is reduced; it may force the retailers into bankruptcy. There is little direct engagement of the property owners with the tenants. Although both parties are charged with the upkeep of the properties, there is little incentive to enhance them since much of the benefit from doing so will accrue to the other party. When properties fall vacant, there seems to be little urgency on the part of owners to find new occupants, and there may be good reason for this. The principal characteristic of a property from the point of view of an investment fund is its capital value, which is tied to its rent. To reduce the rent in an attempt quickly to attract a tenant will destroy that value.
Short-term letting to independent retailers may be unprofitable. Among the inducements to a new tenant there are liable to be deferments of rent and contributions to fitting-out costs, which cannot be afforded easily by small independent retailers. Whereas, in the past, retail leases could be for as long as 20 years, they are now expected to be of a limited duration. Moreover, the high rates of failure among small start-up enterprises deters property owners from accepting such tenants.
The planning departments of local authorities face an intractable problem in motivating a collection of remote and disengaged agents to co-operate in any plans they might have for urban renewal and regeneration. Matters were quite different in the early post-war years, when urban reconstruction was an urgent priority. Much of our modern environment was created in that era. One can conjure up an image of a post-war architect or planning officer airily waving their hand over a tabletop model corresponding to a large derelict area that was set for redevelopment. The tabletop would be covered with small, white rectilinear boxes representing buildings in the modernist style. The person demonstrating the plan might have been dressed in an imitation of the sartorial style of the Swiss-French architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known commonly by the pseudonym Le Corbusier.
We have come to regret the depredations of the cheap modern architecture that accompanied this post-war redevelopment; we should remember its vigour and ambition, which we might wish to recapture. We look for contemporary examples of such enterprise, but they are rare. Some of them are the result of private sector initiatives. The Built Environment Committee has witnessed one such example recently, which is from a firm that began working on town centre redevelopment some 30 years ago. The firm is based in the Sheffield area of South Yorkshire. A typical example of what the firm has achieved has been the redevelopment of an extensive site of a derelict steelworks. This degree of enterprise is rare and it cannot be relied upon to achieve the reconstruction that is called for. Only by engendering the same spirit of enterprise within many local authorities can a major transformation be achieved. It is appropriate to remember that once, in the not-so-distant past, they did embody such a spirit.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, I remind the House that it is an advisory five minutes.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
It is advisory, which means you do not need to go to five minutes; you can go shorter than that. Every one of the previous speakers was below five minutes. It is not mandatory but I remind the House that we have speakers who will speak later on this afternoon, when other Members who have already spoken will be at home.
Lord Mair (CB)
My Lords, I warmly support this Bill. As set out by the noble Lord, Lord Whitby, in his introduction, high streets have faced numerous challenges in recent years for a variety of reasons, notably the falling consumer demand for retail shopping, the increase in online shopping and the presence of out-of-town retail parks and shopping centres. In many towns this has led to shop closures, declining footfall and a loss of appeal of the high street.
This House’s Built Environment Committee, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is currently undertaking an inquiry into high streets in towns and small cities. I have been privileged to be a member of that committee, along with the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth. Our committee has received more than 60 submissions of evidence from many organisations and individuals and heard from a large variety of oral witnesses. Views differ on what should be included on high streets to meet the needs of the whole community while, at the same time, supporting a thriving local economy. It is clear that this will very much depend on local circumstances. Each high street or town centre is different. Correspondingly, local authorities will have different views as to what improvement plans would be most appropriate for the designated high street in their area.
The Local Government Association was the only organisation that gave evidence to our committee to specifically refer to this Bill. It also commented ahead of the Bill’s Committee stage in another place. It has raised concerns that the Bill is legislating to give local authorities responsibility for something that they increasingly have limited control over, due to the impact of national policies. The LGA particularly emphasises permitted development rights, introduced in 2013, which allow changes of use between offices and residential uses. These were extended in 2021 to allow change of use between the very wide range of use class E properties and residential units. The LGA argues that these development rights should be revoked because they undermine a council’s place-making and strategic planning ambitions; property owners can change or remove high street uses without needing to seek planning permission from the council. In the context of this Bill, the LGA surely makes a good point.
The Bill will require local authorities to have regard to an improvement plan when exercising planning functions. How, if at all, would this relate to permitted development rights, and will such rights that allow significant changes of use without planning permission potentially impede the effectiveness of a council’s improvement plan required by the Bill? When the improvement plan is reviewed within five years of its publication, as required by the Bill, that review will presumably be by the council itself. When assessing the effectiveness of its own improvement plan, the council will have to take into account any changes of use under permitted development rights during the previous five years. Those changes of use could be very significant and, outside the council’s control, have adversely affected the council’s improvement plan.
Regarding financial implications of the Bill, the Government have allowed £26 million, the bulk of which will be for all local authorities in England to prepare and review up to three improvement plans for their designated high streets. Is this enough funding? Our committee has heard compelling evidence of local authorities being increasingly deprived of funds; they are already finding it difficult to allocate resources for planning and applying for the many government funding schemes, as referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth. Moreover, this £26 million probably covers only the costs of preparing the improvement plans; it almost certainly does not cover any significant costs of the actual improvement. In practice, this means that in preparation of improvement plans local authorities will be restricted to confining their plans to relatively unambitious, low-cost improvements.
I commend to noble Lords the excellent book, recently published by the RIBA, High Street: How Our Town Centres Can Bounce Back from the Retail Crisis. One of its authors, Dr Lucy Montague, from the Manchester School of Architecture, is a special adviser to our Built Environment Committee’s inquiry. She and her colleagues undertook a three-year study of over 100 high streets, which highlighted the importance of broader policies, such as town centre first planning policies. The book is refreshingly optimistic about the future of the high street, arguing that the crisis on the high street is a misleading term. There is indeed a crisis in big retail, and town and city centres dependent on multiple retailers have certainly suffered, but the authors argue that the high streets more reliant on independent retailers and emerging new sectors have a brighter future.
In summary, this is broadly a very positive Bill. By requiring councils to designate a priority area and propose high street improvement plans, the Bill has the potential to pave the way for future government policies specifically to support that designation and those improvement plans. The Bill may be less useful in isolation if other government policies are not introduced or modified in alignment with the Bill. Nevertheless, the Bill’s principal objective is to create thriving high streets, and this is to be warmly applauded.
Lord Horam (Con)
My Lords, this Bill is about high streets. In my early life, I had the enjoyment of a great high street. Although I was born in the small Lancashire village of Grimsargh, from which I take my title, when I was seven my parents moved to the seaside resort of Southport. My local high street was therefore Lord Street, Southport. Lord Street was developed in the early part of the 19th century, and has all the merits of that vigorous Victorian age. It is straight and wide, it has covered arcades each side, and it is tree-lined throughout. One feature of Lord Street is the Westminster Tea Rooms. If you ever go to Southport, I thoroughly recommend it; everyone in the House would feel very much at home there. The story goes that the young Louis Napoleon, when in exile in England, took a flat off Lord Street. When he became the emperor of France in the 1850s, he remembered Lord Street, and called his architect Georges-Eugène Haussmann to say, “Remodel Paris. I want a central boulevard like Lord Street, Southport—only bigger”. Thus was born the Champs-Élysées—arguably the greatest high street in the world—all based on Lord Street, in Southport.
It is difficult to verify the truth of this story, but it does show the importance of high streets. We all love a good high street: it cheers us up, gives us pleasure and enhances local pride, as well as being good for business. A recent survey by the Nationwide Building Society showed that 72% of people judge the vitality of an area by its high street. I therefore welcome my colleague Jack Brereton’s Private Member’s Bill to help high streets. Jack was the cabinet member for regeneration, heritage and transport on Stoke-on-Trent Council before becoming the MP for Stoke-on-Trent South, and therefore has a great grasp of all these issues. The Bill is sponsored in the Lords by my noble friend Lord Whitby, who of course was a great leader of Birmingham City Council and is still a very successful businessman, as well as having a continuing interest in these matters.
The object of the Bill is to preserve and enhance high streets as places of economic benefit and growth. I particularly like that it has all-party support, and I congratulate my colleague Jack Brereton on achieving that—he has done better than most Prime Ministers in recent times. It brings all local people together, including local businesses. It develops an action plan. There is the possibility of some government funding. It gives local authorities fresh responsibilities, but it is not too heavy-handed. It is, by design, flexible and light.
The Local Government Association, I am disappointed to say, believes the scheme is unnecessary. I think that is a bit of “not invented here”. The fact is that it is necessary to emphasise the importance of local businesses to high streets, and I think their views should be taken into account more than they have been in the past.
I said that I spent my teenage years in Southport. I now live in south Fulham, and a perfect test case for the Bill will be the Wandsworth Bridge Road, which goes through south Fulham and is a vital artery. It is perfect for the sort of action area specified in the Bill. It is a great Bill, and I hope it is adopted throughout the country.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I am afraid I bring a somewhat different perspective from that of the earlier speakers. It reflects the views that I presented in much discussion on the levelling-up Bill. The last thing our local communities, particularly the most disadvantaged, need is more meddling and more statutory requirements laid on them from Westminster, without the resources to deliver them. As the noble Lord, Lord Mair, pointed out, the Government are offering money to draw up the plans but not to deliver them. It is not within the power of your Lordships’ House to put down an amendment to demand that there also be funding from the centre, but, were it within our power, I would be very tempted to do so. I direct this comment particularly towards those on the Labour Front Bench: should they be in the position of implementing the Bill, I hope they would look at providing such a financial provision.
We need Westminster to get out of the road of local communities: to stop sticking its oar in and give people the power and resources to make decisions locally. One example from the framework of the Bill is that artificial time periods for review are set out here in Westminster, saying, “You will review this every five years”. But it may be that local circumstances are different: maybe everything is going swimmingly and everyone can see it, or maybe something is going wrong in another area and resources need to be moved. That is an artificial imposition from Westminster.
I note that we are in a situation where councils overwhelmingly need a long-term funding settlement—they face a £4 billion gap over the next two years—to protect their statutory services and to provide what is needed on the high street, such as cleaning and maintenance. They are under enormous pressure because there is simply not the money, and this is just one more imposition being laid on.
It is interesting to think about what the guidance will say. There is a question of powers but there is possibly some ability to use the guidance for an issue that was also raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mair: permitted development rights. Your Lordships’ House has heard from two noble Lords not currently in their place—the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Crisp—who highlighted the terrible nature of the housing that has been developed under permitted development rights. Some 100,000 dwellings have been created since 2013, but many lack fire safety standards, adequate ventilation and natural light—imagine housing without natural light. They do not have the facilities, such as schools and health facilities, that are needed. The Government have ruled out giving councils control over this within these zones, but is it possible to put anything in the guidance that might help to address this issue?
I will particularly focus on privatisation, because public land ownership in Britain is in crisis. Since the late 1970s, half of all of what was public land has been sold off: 2 million hectares in total, or 10% of Britain’s total land area. Can the Minister—or the Labour Front Bench in the future—comment on whether the Government would consider making a recommendation in the guidance that there be no further privatisation of public space in these high street plans? That is absolutely crucial to our politics.
I am going to declare an interest here, because I believe that our high street should be a place of political activity —something that privatisation has often led to the exclusion of. My declaration of interest is that I was with Occupy London on day one, when it was driven out and unable to occupy what many people think of as a public space, Paternoster Square—a long-term historic political space in London. Now, of course, it is owned and managed by the Japanese group Mitsubishi Estate, which was able to close that square off, and Occupy London ended up in front of St Paul’s instead.
I hope that we might see some guidance on this. I hope that we might also see in the guidance whether the Government are going to provide all kinds of prescriptions to make sure that we protect small independent businesses against large multinational companies.
Finally, I will put on the record that I did really struggle with this—but eventually I decided that, however limited and controlling from Westminster it is, it provides a little bit more in the way of resources to local councils. So it is not my intention to seek to slow the progress of the Bill, despite the very deep concern of the Local Government Association and local authorities.
The Earl of Shrewsbury (Con)
My Lords, I broadly welcome this Bill, promoted by my honourable friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South. I congratulate him on bringing forward this initiative, but I have some doubts as to whether his Bill is the panacea he believes it to be. The question of the decline of the high street is multifaceted and complex. It has not happened just recently; it has been going on for many years, and I believe that it was started by the move to establish out-of-town shopping complexes. They provide convenience, of course, with a multiple choice of outlets, ease of parking and much more. I am not against them by any means, as they hit a good note with shoppers, whose aspirations and needs were changing in any event. The customer in general had less time and a busier working life to browse the high street.
If one couples this with the increasing financial burden of rates and rents on small shops, together with the withdrawal of banks and building society branches and the lack of adequate and convenient car parking, along with online shopping, the writing has been on the wall for some considerable time. Slowly, the high street has become the home of coffee shops and charity outlets. In my local towns in the north Midlands, there appears to be a constant and rapid turnover of outlets starting up and then rapidly closing down again.
Parking is a very serious problem, especially for the elderly and less mobile. In Ashbourne, for instance, which is the gateway to the Peak District, the town lacks a bypass. The locals have been crying out for one for years, but to no avail. Currently, all the heavy lorries travelling to and from the Buxton area, from the limestone quarries and elsewhere, have to drive through the centre of the town. There is no other way. This causes dreadful congestion and parking problems that rebound on the high street shops and shoppers.
In numerous cases, local authorities appear to be more interested in closing or curtailing parking facilities to make way for residential developments. Of course, they need the money. The rates and rents in the high street are far too onerous, and it is a very brave soul indeed who opens a high street shop these days.
In addition, specifically concerning this Bill, with a considerable amount of pressure being placed on local authorities, coupled with their restricted resources, I find it difficult to believe that they will be either willing or able to put into practice the plans promoted in this Bill. Both national and local government have come up with all types of ideas for some considerable while to try to halt the decline of the high street, but the decline continues nevertheless. I hate to be negative, but I cannot see this Bill altering the situation. It is yet another ambitious and well-intentioned initiative to complement a number of previous ones, and I am afraid that it will serve to add a further layer of bureaucracy to an already overstretched system. I do support the Bill and I wish it well, but I simply do not have the confidence that it will achieve its aims.
Lord Razzall (LD)
My Lords, it is common ground across your Lordships’ House that many of our high streets are in a mess. Whether this is symptomatic of our rundown country, who of course knows? We see boarded-up shops and closed pubs and post offices—and, obviously, the sub-post offices have not been helped by the Horizon scandal. We now see often an excess of estate agents and—dare I say it?—antiques shops.
I cannot compete with the noble Lord, Lord Horam, and the Champs-Élysées, but I can say that not every high street is in a mess. My own high street in Tisbury still has a thriving butcher and bread shop as well as a small supermarket and a hardware store and two thriving pubs—so all is not lost in Tisbury.
Our high streets have continued to deteriorate over the past 20 years, despite a number of initiatives by the Government. It was as long ago as 2011 that Mary Portas came up with her 25 recommendations to deal with the problems of our high streets. If you look at the list of recommendations, you will be hard pushed to say how many of them have been effectively implemented. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitby, indicated, and the noble Lord, Lord Mair, touched on, a number of funds have been established: the future high streets fund, the town centre fund and the local growth fund—to name but three. Have they really done anything significantly to improve the status of our high streets?
Rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the Labour Benches, my party will not oppose the Bill, but it fails to address, as a number of noble Lords have indicated, the two key problems. First, there is the planning system, which the noble Lord, Lord Mair, touched on. There have been successive extensions to permitted development rights, which are a serious block to local people’s abilities to create the sorts of communities in high streets that they want. The noble Lord, Lord Mair, referred to the continuous changes to and increased use of the national use class order, which again restricts the ability to control the content of the high street. As he indicated, class E buildings can now be redeveloped as residential properties in the high street without any resort to the planning situation.
Secondly, we have the issue of council expenditure. As noble Lords have indicated, the Government are allocating the money to develop and draw up the plans, but not to implement them. All the speakers on the Bill have reservations as to whether this will produce any actual implementation. This is in the context of the overall shortage that local authorities are currently looking at—I think the LGA indicates that there will be a £4 billion shortfall for local authorities over the next one or two years. Inevitably, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, indicated, that will lead to cuts in street cleaning and maintenance because, increasingly, local authorities are able to focus their finances only on essential services, which those do not count as.
So, as I have said, we on these Benches are not opposing the Bill. It is a very small step indeed to deal with a very large problem. I might say cynically that perhaps that is why the Government are supporting it.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I draw attention to my registered interests: I am one of the proud members of the growing number of vice-presidents of the LGA; I am also a serving county councillor on Hertfordshire County Council.
It has been an interesting debate and very helpful to hear from members of the Built Environment Committee —I am grateful for their input. I say from the outset that we will not oppose the Bill, on the basis that doing something, even something that represents a drop in the ocean, is usually better than doing nothing. However, I have much sympathy with the view of the Local Government Association, which characterises the Bill as unnecessary and a distraction from what councils really need to protect and enhance the future of their high streets. It recognises that what is really needed is a stable policy environment for high streets and planning, with sufficient resources and long-term growth and regeneration funding.
Much of my last eight years has been spent engaged with partners on the £1 billion regeneration programme for Stevenage town centre. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Horam, that it is not quite the Champs-Élysées, but our town centre in its early days was very influential in the development of Rotterdam.
We were very fortunate to have excellent advice from the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, in the early days, and the support of the noble Lord, Lord Porter, when there were unnecessary and unhelpful roadblocks put in our way, and we have ongoing support from the High Streets Task Force. We are now well under way with our project, to the extent that the noble Lord, Lord Harrington, in his excellent review of foreign direct investment last November, used us as a positive case study, saying:
“This approach is reflected in the collaborative work between Reef and UBS (developer and funder), and Stevenage Borough Council as both Local Planning Authority and landowner, to secure a new £65 million headquarters for Autolus Therapeutics. This development is the first of its kind globally and there is no other Town Centre advanced manufacturing cell and gene therapy facility across multiple floors”.
That was a really big plus for us.
I will talk more about purposefully driving footfall in this way in a moment, but I have mentioned this because I fear that there is an element in the Bill of pointing the finger of blame at local councils, many of which are currently trying to scale some of the obstacles that we too faced. As the tumbleweed of this Government’s 14 years of economic failure rolls through our town centres, both in actual and symbolic terms, it leaves communities feeling bereft, neglected and forgotten. Just this morning, we heard that the dreadful milestone of the 6,000th high street bank to close had been reached. Too many post offices that sat at the heart of neighbourhood high streets have been closed, presumably by the same dreadful decision-makers who imposed such misery on their own sub-postmasters.
The Government seem to stand by paralysed as the rise of overseas online retailers, such as Temu, almost literally steals the clothes from our retailers’ backs, with loss leaders that are surely paid for in less than ideal terms and conditions for workers. The uncertainty of the economic climate holds back investment in our high streets, and those brave enough to try, as the noble Earl, Lord Shrewsbury, pointed out, find themselves penalised by an antiquated and inflexible business rates system and soaring energy costs. The catastrophic funding crisis facing local government, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Hanworth, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, leaves too many councils too paralysed by pressures on adult social care, children’s services and temporary and emergency accommodation to give the necessary focus to economic development and place-making.
A combination of the impact of the cost of living crisis on our communities and a perception that public spaces feel unsafe drives people further towards online retail. I also point out that our attempts to amend the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill to further level the playing field between online and high street retail fell on deaf ears, sadly. We cannot turn the clock back on internet shopping, but we can surely ensure that it does not continue to enjoy the very significant financial advantage it currently has over high streets.
As well as these national issues, councils will face all the issues we did over complex ownership. There are more than 60 owners of property in my town centre to be worked through, as so ably articulated by my noble friend Lord Hanworth. Then there is the challenge of how we preserve heritage and history, and the constant challenge of successive funding pots, all with different demands and constraints and draining scarce council resources to put bids together, not to mention the issue of permitted development riding roughshod over our local plans, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Mair, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.
We have a positive story to tell in Stevenage, but this was achieved in spite of the barriers and obstacles we encountered. Following the wise principles set out by Bill Grimsey, we started with master-planning, engaging our community, developing strong cross-sector partnerships and attracting key private sector partners, concentrating on driving footfall, with new homes, workplaces and flexible workspaces in the town centre to support existing retail and offer new hospitality opportunities. Our public sector hub, planned with colleagues from both councils, the NHS, the police and others, will soon be in the development phase and we have developed a whole culture and leisure strategy to reinvigorate our town centre, with event space, new leisure and sport facilities and green spaces. We have capitalised on our strategic transport location with a station gateway project, including the development of a new bus station and linking our 45 kilometres of cycleway to the town centre network. We are focusing on the skills of the future by bringing a new science and technology training facility into the heart of our town centre, and after several years of absence, we are delighted that Marks & Spencer is now back.
If it is the intention of the Bill to follow up the plans it implores local councils to make with funding, planning changes and powers that will enable them to happen, it will not be a bad thing. I would be grateful if the Minister could shed any further light on the mechanism for incorporating these high street improvement plans into local plans.
We all know that our citizens want to see thriving community hubs in their town centres. If my party is given the opportunity to serve in government after the next general election, our six pledges announced yesterday will make an immediate start on supporting councils to do what they need to do. We will create the necessary economic stability by modernising the business rates system so that it works equally for sole traders and small businesses as it does for huge corporates.
We will crack down on anti-social behaviour with real action on shoplifting and town centre patrols, so that people and shopworkers feel safe and are safe. We will have a blitz on planning powers, working with local government to ensure that planning helps the builders not the blockers.
There will also be new powers for mayors so they can get on with the job of regenerating our communities after 14 years of not just stagnation but going backwards. But that is for the future, whether July, September, October or whenever the Government let the country decide. In the meantime, let us hope that the Bill will help our high streets a little while we wait for the change our residents want to see.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Swinburne) (Con)
My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend Lord Whitby for his sponsorship of the Bill through the House, as well as the words of support from others in the Chamber—albeit some of them fairly caveated. I also take this opportunity to thank the honourable Jack Brereton MP for his leadership in the other place on this important issue.
Our high streets are evolving. In the face of challenges—such as the rise of online retail and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic—high streets have had to adapt. However, it is clear that some have been able to adapt more quickly than others. That is why the Government are working with local communities to help them navigate the change. We have introduced measures, such as the long-term plan for towns, which will invest £1.5 billion across 75 towns to drive regeneration, as well as the £830 million future high streets fund, which has already helped more than 72 high streets across the country to recover from the pandemic. It is why we are supporting the Bill, which will ensure that local authorities are prioritising high streets in their area, as well as fully utilising the powers already at their disposal.
On the specifics of the Bill, it will make the designation of high streets and the creation of high street improvement plans a statutory requirement. Each local authority will need to designate at least one street or network of streets in their area as a high street. Local authorities will be able to designate as many high streets as they want. However, the Government have committed to funding the costs of up to three high street designations, and any designations beyond this number will need to be funded by local authorities themselves. Local authorities will then have to create plans for improving the vitality of the designated high streets, which should be reviewed at least once every five years.
Partnerships are vital for the success of high street regeneration, which is why local residents, businesses and others will have a real say on the improvement plans. Local authorities will have a requirement to consult both on the high streets they designate and on the related improvement plans. The Bill will also mean that local authorities will have to take into account high street improvement plans when exercising their planning functions, supporting already strong protections for mixed-use high streets.
Taken together, these measures will ensure that local authorities not only prioritise the health of their high streets but use their existing powers to drive forward improvements—such as Section 215 powers to require land to be cleaned up when it is detracting from the surroundings. The Government appreciate the action that many local authorities have already taken to improve their high streets, which these new requirements will complement.
Following Royal Assent to the Bill, we will be issuing guidance for local authorities on what an improvement plan should look like. We know that local authorities are best placed to judge what high street improvement plans should cover, which is why officials in my department have already begun engaging with local authorities on this matter and will continue to do so as they further develop the guidance.
It is crucial that these plans are not just a tick-box exercise but remain relevant and assist local authorities in regenerating their local area. This is why the Bill requires local authorities to update their plans at least every five years, although it can be earlier, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, suggested. We believe it will provide a balance between giving the plans enough time to have an effect and ensuring that they remain useful documents.
The Government fully recognise the pressure that local authorities are currently under, which is why, as my noble friend Lord Whitby said in his introductory remarks, extra funding will be provided, so that local authorities are able effectively to deliver the measures in the Bill. Alongside this funding, my department will be working closely with local authorities to ensure that they input into the development of guidance for the Bill, ensuring that it gives local authorities the agency and discretion to determine what is best for their area.
In response to the various noble Lords who have raised it, local authorities can already use Article 4 directions to suspend permitted development rights in designated areas which allow them to protect shopping areas. We agree—
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
Can the Minister then tell us how many Article 4 directions were allowed by the department?
Baroness Swinburne (Con)
I will revert to the noble Baroness with a response to that when my department gives me the numbers.
I agree that it is important that we consider the effect of all these things on the high streets, which is why we can include this in the guidance to local authorities. We will certainly consider how we can build this in to assist local authorities, to make sure that they can determine what is best for their area and use all the powers that they have.
The Bill is one part of a broader strategy to create thriving high streets and town centres, building on the wider work this Government are doing to regenerate the high streets. This work includes the high street rental auctions and high street accelerators, which also work alongside the long-term plans for towns, which is backed by £1.5 billion overall to drive ambitious plans to regenerate 75 towns across the UK over the next decade. The broader levelling-up fund of £4.8 billion is already being put to work.
The Bill also complements the work of the towns fund and the future high streets fund, where we have now already allocated over £2.35 billion-worth of town deals and over £830 million of future high streets funding across 170 high streets. We hope that local communities in England will regenerate in order to help create jobs and build more resilient local economies and communities.
To conclude, the Government fully recognise the serious challenges faced by high streets up and down the country and are committed to helping them turn things around. I appreciate, as I am sure all noble Lords do here, just how crucial the health of our high streets is for local communities. For many, places that they should be proud of are currently a shadow of their former selves. The Bill, alongside wider government measures, will help to regenerate our high streets and help to create places that people are proud of.
Lord Whitby (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have participated in today’s important debate. Each contribution has underlined our collective passion for preserving and developing our high streets. If I may, I will make an observation or two.
Before I came here, my life, the journey I had made and my political contribution to society was through local government. To me, it is the essence of a democracy. My intellectual and philosophical journey throughout has been about devolving down to the people you are looking after and are concerned about. The noble Baroness, Lady Green, I believe, mentioned the interference of a top-heavy state. All I would say—
Lord Whitby (Con)
I apologise—a rose by any other name.
However, the point made about top-down interference is something I understand, as the leader of a metropolitan borough. I was the leader during Tony Blair’s period, and I liaised with him regularly. I was the leader while Gordon Brown and then David Cameron were Prime Minister. I share with noble Lords the frustration over the evolution of devolution. I know at what pace it goes, and I know how we aspire to accelerate that.
What I believe that this Private Member’s Bill introduces to that debate—I welcome this because all noble Lords have appreciated it—is a move in the right direction, even though it may only be an incremental movement to what we might perceive as utopia. To me, it is a tacit understanding that the Government realise that the movement is bottom-up, through the guidance that we will inform and the consultation that everyone ought to have. The Bill aims to align the munificence of the Government—I think it is almost £15 billion-worth of money through a whole plethora of pots—with the aspirations of local communities, which is what we all believe in.
I thank all noble Lords for expressing tacit support. I am sure that the observations that they have made will inform the guidance that the Government and the Secretary of State will write. We are happy to work with noble Lords and other stakeholders as we develop the guidance. As it is a Private Member’s Bill, an amendment would have killed the Bill, so I thank noble Lords again for their support.
I reiterate my thanks to the honourable Jack Brereton for both selecting me to take the Bill through the House and his leadership in the other place. I also thank my noble friend the Minister and her ministerial colleague Jacob Young in the other place for all their hard work on the Bill, as well as all the DLUHC officers for their work on it. I look forward to taking the Bill through the remaining stages. I beg to move.