High Streets (Built Environment Committee Report)

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I draw the Committee’s attention to my interests in the register. I am president of the Local Government Association, and I have previously been the chair of ukactive.

I welcome this timely and important report. As consumer behaviour continues to shift online, many of our towns are losing their economic vitality and civic identity. I shop online: it is quick and easy, but it is fairly soulless compared with visiting your local high street. As the committee notes, there is no single solution to regenerate our high streets, but we must remain flexible, recognising that no two communities are the same. But if we are really serious about regenerating high streets that are resilient and economically viable, inclusivity must be at the forefront of our efforts.

In 2014, the organisation Disabled Go—now known as AccesAble—audited nearly 30,000 high street shops and restaurants to assess their accessibility. Of the 27,000 retail outlets examined, only 20% were accessible to wheelchair users, largely due to steps and the absence of ramps. Moreover, 91% of the 105 leading high street retailers provided no online information about accessibility at their stores.

The picture is no better in the hospitality sector: around 40% of restaurants had no accessible toilet. I apologise; I am going to overshare. If I go somewhere new, I have to very carefully moderate what I drink, in case there is not an accessible toilet. Nearly half of the restaurant staff questioned said that they had received no disability awareness training.

While an audit on this scale has not been repeated since, the Government’s 2021 UK Disability Survey confirmed that there had been little progress in making our high streets more accessible. The report found that 31% of respondents had trouble accessing public spaces “all the time” or “often”. Of those, a further 78% said that they found it either impossible or very difficult to access shops.

This is not merely a social failure but an economic one. The spending power of disabled people and their households, commonly referred to as the “purple pound”, is estimated at £274 billion—a potential revenue that our high streets are actively losing due to inaccessibility. I recognise what others have said about old shops not necessarily being easy to adapt, but not all access is hard to achieve. It is about being creative, putting a notice outside the shop door or having a buzzer; it is about being open to thinking differently.

A disabled person recently shared an experience with me. He was visiting his local high street and was unable to access a shop due to the steps at the entrance, so his wife had to go inside to ask whether the shop had a ramp. It turns out that it did, but there was no way of knowing this from outside the shop. He told me that, if he had been alone, he would not even have bothered waiting outside or trying to shout through the door; he simply would have moved on. Many shops already have ramps and basic accessibility measures in place, but it is clear that visible communication is missing from our high streets.

I welcome the report’s recommendation to improve transport access to our high streets, but public transport still leaves a lot to be desired. While I greatly support improving bus networks for better connectivity, there is no promise that that will improve the journeys of disabled people.

Just last night, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, was informed when she was trying to get on a bus that the law has changed—supposedly—and that wheelchair users no longer have priority on board. The law has not changed, but this is not an infrequent experience for disabled people.

It is essential to the growth of our high streets that any changes to transport access must consider disabled people. Car parking spaces should account for adaptive vehicles and accessible EV charging. There is a woeful lack of EV charging ports available to disabled people across the country. About two years ago, I tried to change my car to an electric car and I found that there were no accessible charging points within at least a 40-mile radius of my house, so I could not switch.

In certain towns, EV charging spaces have been put on top of existing disabled bays. While there is no legal requirement to have a certain number of disabled bays in a car park, it is abhorrent that access for disabled people is continually being taken away. As such, I urge all local authorities to consult disabled people at all stages of regeneration projects. By including disabled people from the outset, local authorities will not risk having to spend more money down the line to make their towns more accessible.

I am also very interested in how we can use high street regeneration projects to drive growth among the UK’s physical activity sector, as previously reported by ukactive. There is a huge opportunity to integrate physical activity and well-being provision within communities by regenerating underutilised properties—shops, restaurants and vacant office spaces—into new, accessible and budget-friendly facilities.

Regeneration projects will benefit greatly from the inclusion of physical activity and sport; by creating healthier, more vibrant communities you are improving social conditions and making happier citizens. However, under current planning laws, it is easier to open a chicken shop than a yoga studio. If the Government are invested in promoting healthier lifestyles and decreasing obesity rates, why do they continue to make it a challenge for those who just want to improve the health and well-being of their communities?

I value my local high street. I love it: I love the eclectic nature of the shops and how people are trying really hard to make it more accessible, but there is still so much work that we have to do to make sure that disabled people have the same ability as non-disabled people to access local high streets.