Town Deals: Covid-19 Recovery

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, and to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore) on securing this important debate, and I thank him for supporting me, in his other role as Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Parliamentary Private Secretary, with the matter of Walley’s Quarry landfill in my constituency, which I will touch on later because it relates to the town deal and the need to solve that problem before we get the benefits of the investment.

Before I talk more about Newcastle-under-Lyme, I want to start by addressing some of the comments of the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe). Let me quote at some length from one of her colleagues:

“For far too long the ambitions, needs and values of nine million people in towns across Britain have not been heard.

Our economic model treats cities as engines of growth, which at best drag surrounding towns along in their wake, causing life to become harder, less secure and less hopeful for too many people in towns in recent decades.

Our political system is blind to the values and experiences of people who live in our towns, wrongly treating cities as a proxy for the national opinion.

After the EU Referendum starkly exposed the growing gulf between towns and cities, it is clear that this is no longer sustainable.”

Those are brilliant words. They are the words of the shadow Foreign Secretary, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), who represents another northern town, when she launched the Centre For Towns back in December 2017. Actually, it was the Conservative party and Government who took that agenda, ran with it and spoke to the people who felt they had not been listened to. Meanwhile, at the election, the Labour party doubled down on their votes in the cities and from people who voted remain and wanted to reverse the referendum result, whereas in most of the towns in the red wall, such as the one I have the honour to represent, people voted leave, wanted to be listened to and wanted their vote and their town to be respected. It is little wonder that the results of the election followed from that.

I believe that only 22 of the 101 towns invited to bid were in districts controlled by Conservative administrations and 39 were controlled by Labour administrations, so on the point that the hon. Member for Leicester East made, this is really about people voting with their feet, because they saw that this Government were proposing to offer something to towns that had been left behind for far too long—towns such as Wigan and Newcastle-under-Lyme. I make absolutely no apology for that, and I am really glad that the Government have finally grasped the nettle on towns that have been left behind. That is not necessarily a consequence of politics. It is as much about economics; it is about people moving to cities and the globalisation of jobs. It is also about the change in retail—many of our high streets depend on retail. I will say a bit more about that.

On 8 June, 30 towns received funding in the most recent wave of town deal funding—the Secretary of State announced a total of £725 million—one of which was Newcastle-under-Lyme. I am very proud of our bid and our board, of which I am a member. I thank Trevor McMillan, who is also the vice-chancellor of Keele University in my constituency, for his leadership of the board, and Councillor Stephen Sweeney, the deputy leader of the council, for his role on it. We put in a tremendous bid, and we managed to get nearly the full £25 million, which will be incredibly valuable in regenerating Newcastle-under-Lyme.

I also want to put in in a word for some of our other bids. There are many schemes, as the Minister knows. Newcastle College, which is one of the best further education colleges in the entire country and was one of the first ever to get “outstanding” across the board from Ofsted, has a bid for an institute of technology. Obviously, that is not within the Ministry’s remit, but there is an enabling bid with it because the site that it wants requires that we move the council’s depot, which is in completely the wrong location, to somewhere else on the site. There is an enabling bid through the levelling-up fund, and there is also a community renewal fund bid in.

I agree completely with what the hon. Member for Strangford said. We need to find better ways of helping local authorities and local community organisations to get bids. A lot of these places have not had investment and do not have the experience of putting in bids. They do not necessarily have a pipeline and things that are shovel-ready. The community renewal fund, in particular, was on a very tight timescale that also coincided with the local elections. We got a good bid together, but in some ways it is the same people who always bid for things, so I want to find ways to reach out to communities— even villages and parish councils—that could bid for some of these things but do not have the expertise or the resources to do that. We need ways to support our authorities and councils, even down to parish council level. That would be really welcome in making sure everybody can bid in to these funds in the future.

I will speak a little bit about Newcastle’s bid, which has three main objectives. First, to open up new growth opportunities through enhanced physical and digital connectivity. We will have new electric vehicle charging infrastructure and improved wi-fi across the town centre, better public transport and better cycling measures. Secondly, we will encourage increased footfall in the town centre by diversifying and enhancing it. We will demolish and redevelop lots of previous sites. Some have been demolished already with the advance funds. There is not much to point to at the moment because things are going down, but very soon things will be coming up again, and I know that will be a real moment of hope for the town.

Finally, the bid aims to channel investment into regenerating communities, particularly some of my most deprived wards such as Knutton and Chesterton. The master plan for Knutton includes improving business accommodation, a new village hall and village green, 240 new homes and improvements to road safety. There will also be investment into Chesterton and Cross Street, enabling high-quality housing for the local community—not only new housing but replenishing and replacing the existing stock.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned electric vehicle charging. Yesterday, his colleague, the hon. Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) proposed a ten-minute rule Bill that I think will be critical for the future if we are looking towards electric vehicles, and I was pleased to sponsor it and pleased that the hon. Lady brought that forward. The hon. Gentleman mentioned development, and I think the hon. Member for Kensington referred in her introduction yesterday to all new developments having those key charging points in place. Does he feel that that should be part of this?

[Aaron Bell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. We absolutely need to ensure that we think about future technologies and those that are here today when we undertake development. We see that on the estate now; I think Speaker’s Court is having charging infrastructure installed. If we are to build new buildings, it makes sense that they should have those places for charging.

I should also mention that, as well as the £23.6 million from the town deal, we secured £11 million from the future high streets fund, which means the levelling up funding already secured by Newcastle-under-Lyme is more than £34 million, with other bids currently in. That future high streets fund bid is so crucial to the actual recovery from covid, which is the title of the debate. Unfortunately, covid has exacerbated trends that were already there in our town centre. We have lost an awful lot of tenants on our high street. We have a large high street and the Ironmarket pedestrianised area, but there is unfortunately an awful lot of empty shops at the moment.

The solution obviously cannot be more retail, because people are shopping online. We need more hospitality and housing in the town centre, and that is exactly what our future high streets bid will do, with the redevelopment of the long vacant Ryecroft site and the pulling down the old civic offices, which I believe is beginning this week, although it will take quite a while because there is a lot of asbestos and it has to be done carefully. Again, these are real signs of regeneration. Things that have been left derelict and vacant for far too long are finally being addressed by this Government, by our town deal bid and by our future high streets fund bid.

That all shows the commitment of the Government to levelling up places such as Newcastle, which are long overdue some TLC, basically. Once we have got it all done—it will take a few years—we will actually have a better high street. We will build back better. We will have more skills, with a skills centre opening in Lancaster Buildings that will help people get back into jobs or to reskill, and we will have more attractive public spaces. That is important too, because the physical infrastructure of a town centre is so important for people’s experiences.

I should mention a couple of private sector issues blighting Newcastle that I think the Ministry should have an interest in. We have a large student flat building that has been left unfinished for many years, called the Sky Buildings. It is incredibly difficult to work out who can actually handle that process. Various companies have gone through liquidations and takeovers. The investors appear to have lost their money, but that has not been finalised as such. The council is not in a position to take it over through a compulsory purchase order because it is probably more of a liability than an asset now. This sort of thing can blight town centres. We need to find better ways of dealing with unfinished buildings, where the architect or the builders have essentially gone bust and left something unfinished, which can blight an area from a long time and discourages further private sector investment coming in.

Finally, it would not be a speech from me without my mentioning Walleys quarry, the landfill in my constituency. We already have £34 million of investment, and it will be nearly £50 million if we get this institute of technology bid, and these will make Newcastle such a better place, but there is a bleak cloud hanging over the town, and that is the landfill and the odour coming from the landfill. It is principally a DEFRA issue and a Department of Health and Social Care issue. However, it requires a multi-agency approach, and Staffordshire County Council and the Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council are involved as well. Any help that the Minister’s Department can give us in getting this situation resolved as quickly as possible will be vital, because the stink from the landfill is undermining what is excellent news for Newcastle. When I announced the £23.5 million, people were obviously pleased but all the money in the world will not help unless we get this problem resolved. Through the Minister, I plead again to the Secretary of State and will raise it at Prime Minister’s questions.

Newcastle-under-Lyme has so much potential. Finally we are unlocking it with this investment. I thank the Government for what they are doing and my hon. Friend the Member for Southport for calling this important debate.