High Streets

Debate between Brian Binley and Andrew Turner

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Binley]

I cannot make the point I made about businesses being driven out of town centres because of high rates without accepting the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I am happy to do so.

Small business rate relief is still made a mystery to many local businesses in our town centres. We have not given it the push it needs and deserves, and many of the opportunities remain unclaimed by small businesses. I urge the Government, and us all, to do more to bring small business rate relief to the attention of many small businesses which have struggled through the recession and now see light at the end of the tunnel but need all the help they can get. Similarly, small businesses are less equipped to deal with red tape and with the lease negotiations than large retailers and their resources.

Many leases still include upward-only rent reviews and we have to do something about that. We have talked about it in this place for a very long time but it is crazy that many businesses under great pressure, one of which I am dealing with in Northampton at the moment, have leases with upward-only rent reviews. I appeal to local government and to local property owners to recognise the iniquity of such clauses in leases.

Out-of-town developments have, of course, been a problem for town centres. Between 2008 and 2012—so both Front-Bench teams are implicated—approximately 2.4 million square metres of additional shopping centre retail space were added to the planning department’s work. Both Governments are responsible, and we should not try to knock spots off each other on this issue. Both Governments are responsible for adding out-of-town retail space in massive amounts. We need to recognise the impact that that has on our town centres, as I have said before.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the particular problems arises where the council owns the plot on which people wish to build their new out-of-town centre and will get the money from their doing so?

[Mr Binley]

I always agree with my hon. Friend and I am grateful for his support in this area of policy.

Having said that out-of-town development has been immensely harmful, not least in the imbalance of valuation of rate, I shall come on to the damage done by local government. Councils have been the major enemy of our town centres for 30 years. That applies to Labour councils, Liberal councils and Conservative councils. Let me explain why. They have allowed the gradual decline through ring roads, isolating town centres and making it difficult for people to get there. I have already made the point about out-of-town developments. Parking charges have been seen as revenue income, although parking areas were built as a service to shoppers. At last our councils are beginning to appreciate that. Building parking areas on the other side of the ring road so that shoppers have to push their trolley across the ring road does not make a great deal of sense from a planning perspective.

Poor planning—piecemeal planning—has denuded our town centres dramatically. One of the problems is that a new planning officer will come along with his own little pet scheme, which he will implement without any reference to the heritage of the town or the style of the building. Planning officers are supposed to be the protectors of our heritage, our good open spaces and our buildings, yet they too have been a disaster for 30 years in many of our town centres. I know people who have gone down to their town centre, managed to get across the ring road, seen the new developments and felt that it was not their town at all. The new development gave no understanding of the heritage of the town.

We need local government to recognise that it has a responsibility to ensure that our town centres are more user-friendly, to ensure that people can get in and out of them easily, to ensure that parking charges are low so that people can come in to shop, and to ensure that we bring people back into our town centres. Too many local government offices have been shoved outside with that new retail development. There is much more that we can do. If anybody wants to read the report, I would be delighted.