Future of Town Centres and High Streets

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that success and resilience are the result of empowering local people to make the decisions that will affect their local area, and in towns such as Romsey that is exactly what should happen when there is an out-of-town planning application for a Tesco store?

[Stephen Mosley]

I cannot speak for Romsey, but in Chester, that is exactly what we have done. That approach was identified by the Conservatives when we took over the council in 2007, and resulted in the creation of Chester City Management, a body of local stakeholders, independent of the local authority, whose sole focus is on bringing footfall to the city. Many of the areas highlighted in the Portas review were identified by Chester City Management as the key to future success.

I should like to focus on one of those areas to showcase the way in which a little ingenuity and flexibility can make a significant difference to footfall. Town centre car parking, as we have heard, is vital to the economy of any city or town centre. Car parking that is too expensive, or a lack of car parking, has just one effect: to discourage people from visiting town centres, encouraging them to travel to out-of-town shopping centres instead. In Chester, we had year after year of inflation-busting increases in parking charges. Car parking was treated as a cash cow rather than as a tool to help local business. When I took over as the executive member responsible for car parking on Chester city council in 2007, I was all too aware of the detrimental effect of limited, high-cost parking on our high street. Along with the city centre manager, Mr Stephen Wundke, I thought up and launched Chester’s free after three scheme, offering free parking after 3pm every day in three of the city’s major car parks. The scheme was specifically targeted at local residents to encourage them to visit the town centre after school pick-up or work. Unlike the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), the local Labour party did not like it and claimed that the reduction in car parking income would mean higher council tax and that residents would end up subsidising visitors to the city.