Economy: High Street Trade

Lord Watts Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

First, as the noble Baroness will know, local councils will be able to retain 100% of their business rates by 2020. Combined authorities that also have mayors will have the facility to raise or reduce business rates in their combined authority area. I totally concur with the noble Baroness, because I can think of two local authorities in Greater Manchester where the councils have been absolutely at the forefront of that revitalisation of their local high streets.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister adopt the suggestion of reducing the size of town centres to take into account the fact of online trading and perhaps make some finance available to local authorities to achieve that aim?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord makes a good point. One of the things that councils observe is that we need more shoppers in our local high streets and not more shops, hence the expansion into some of the excellent food offers in markets now and some of the conversions from office to residential that help to revitalise the footfall in local high streets, particularly in the north of England where I am.