Future of Town Centres and High Streets

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

I welcome the Portas review, which is well researched. It makes 28 excellent recommendations, many of which I agree with. Portas mentions out-of-town supermarkets and shopping centres. My constituency has not had any of those for 15 years; it has had town centre supermarkets and town centre shopping centres, which are a lot better than those out of town. However, in Prestatyn, in my constitutency, Somerfield and Tesco each owned half of one such site, and I believe that some of the supermarkets have land banks. These are not so much about developing their own stores as about keeping other stores out, and that issue needs addressing if we are to develop town centres. Where town centre developments are coming, the time scale should not be 15 years; it should be a lot shorter. When these town centre shopping centres are built, the impact on the local community should also be assessed. While there is a lot of building, disruption and road works, the Valuation Office Agency should be proactive and should give businesses the forms to apply for a rate reduction. This should not be left to happenstance or accident.

Let me also pay tribute to Tesco. When it said it was going to establish stores in my constituency, in Prestatyn and at the Cathco site in Denbigh, I wrote and asked whether it would take 50% of its employees from the dole register, and it agreed. There can be some positive benefits. If companies are developing near the town centre, they need to be integrated as far as possible with the town centre, with lots of coach parking that will benefit not just the shopping centre but the high street, too.

My constituency is blessed with a long-established market in Prestatyn. A market has just been established in Rhyl by a man called Ray Worsnop without a penny from the public purse. He set it up, he made mistakes but it is now up to 50 stalls strong in the centre of Rhyl high street. When someone is trying to establish a new market there are often tensions in the community. As Mary Portas says, we should establish markets and even car boot sales in the town centre.

[Jim Shannon]

As the hon. Gentleman says, the Portas review is very important. It mentions America and France, but not good practice in Northern Ireland. One example of that is the chamber of trade working with the council to provide financial incentives, such as reduced car parking charges and a transport system that brings people from the edge of towns to the centre.

[Chris Ruane]

I absolutely agree. We should look not just to England but to England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and beyond. If best practice is out there, let us bring it back to our high streets. I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

Markets, as Mary Portas said, will be integral, but how do we establish new markets? What are the lessons to be learned? She also mentions the social aspect of town centres. In Rhyl, we are trying to bring the town alive. The piazzas and public performance areas are empty. Young children who have trained for the children’s eisteddfod go down to Cardiff to perform, but do not perform in their own high street. We have a folk club, a jazz club, a music club and an operatic society: they should be doing public performances. There should be dwell time within a town centre, so people can sit, listen and talk. That is what Mary Portas is saying and we should be listening to her. In Rhyl and Prestatyn, which are seaside towns, we have promenades. The word “promenade” means “to walk”. We do not do enough walking or socialising. We are all on this treadmill of work, work, work and work. We need time to relax and we should be relaxing in our high streets—[Interruption.] Especially in Rhyl.

Mary Portas also addresses the issue of empty shops, and a lot more can be done. Empty shops and derelict properties bring a bad image to a town. In my home town, Rhyl, about six or seven derelict properties were filmed by national TV crews over 20 years. A sign outside one of the properties had been altered so that it read that it was Rhyl’s biggest receiver of stolen goods—nothing had been sold there for 20 years, but the TV cameras would come along and pan across the sign. I went up a stepladder with some black paint and painted it out—two years later, the building was demolished. It should not be left to the antics of a maverick MP to blot such things out; it should be done by the local authority.

Agreements are already in place; councils have section 215 powers. I believe that Hastings council is one of the best in the country in this regard, and I urge other hon. Members to look into it. It sent me a full pack that said exactly what our councils could be doing. Section 215 action can be taken against derelict properties that bring the neighbouring properties into disrepute. Those measures are already available, but they are not being used. Compulsory purchase orders should be used and the whole procedure should be streamlined.

There are many excellent suggestions. Mary Portas also mentions providing a disincentive to landlords to leave premises empty, especially when children’s groups, local artists and voluntary groups are looking for places to use. It is much better to see a light on in a building and actors performing, painters painting or children gathering together, than to see windows shuttered and covered in Billy Smart’s circus posters, seagull faeces and all manner of detritus. Empty shops should be converted into something positive for the community.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I shall be brief because a large number of hon. Members are trying to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, and because I suspect that a great many of them, including the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), want to say the same kind of thing and are generally in agreement with the excellent Mary Portas report, to which I shall not refer further except to say that I broadly support most of its 28 proposals.

Hon. Members with an idle moment or two might find it amusing to look at my first-class website jamesgray.org, which was done not by me but by others, where they will find among other things, very wickedly, a video clip of my maiden speech. If they watch that they will see a fresh-faced, dark-haired, slender and keen young fellow speaking from these very Benches some 15 years ago.

[Chris Ruane]

What happened?

[Mr Gray]

This is what happens when someone represents North Wiltshire for 15 years. In that speech, I went to some lengths to address some of the issues that we are talking about, namely that my constituency had a number of small market towns surrounded by beautiful rural countryside, and how we could prevent that countryside from being built on. That shows both that nothing changes and, I hope, that I have done a reasonable job of living up to my promise and preventing developers from building all over my beautiful constituency.

My constituency provides a case study of these issues; indeed Mary Portas or others might want to use it as a case study or it could be part of one of her pilot studies. We have a variety of market towns, some of which have more flourishing high streets than others. The most famous of those high streets, internationally, at the moment is that of Royal Wootton Bassett, where we have a superb community spirit. Why do we have that spirit? Because Royal Wootton Bassett has a flourishing, vibrant high street and no out-of-town shopping. There is a very good Sainsbury’s, which is 100 yards away from the town hall at which we all stood in silent remembrance of our passing fallen soldiers until very recently.

Equally, in the town of Calne, we have a first-class supermarket right in the town centre. In Malmesbury so far we have no out-of-town shopping, but in the neighbouring town of Chippenham, which is just outside my constituency, there is a large number of out-of-town shopping centres and I am afraid that Chippenham high street is not as vibrant and great a place as it once was. I expect that my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames), who I think will be speaking in a moment or two, will seek to explain why that should be.

This is not just about shopping, it is also about housing. Chippenham is currently looking to expand by 4,000 or 5,000 houses. This very afternoon, people in Trowbridge at Wiltshire council’s headquarters are considering a strategic way forward for areas such as the Birds Marsh estate, which is just outside my hon. Friend’s constituency but in my constituency. I very much hope that they will listen to local people, some 600 or 700 of whom have said they want no further expansion of the town of Chippenham into my constituency. The same issues apply elsewhere. We have to keep our high streets vibrant by preventing developers from spreading out into the countryside.

That brings me finally to a very interesting case in point—the town of Malmesbury. At the moment, two applications are in place, one from Waitrose and one from Sainsbury’s, to build out-of-town shopping centres outside Malmesbury. They claim those centres would provide x hundred new jobs, and of course they might, but in reality they would be jobs that currently exist. They claim that Malmesbury would benefit under section 106 agreements because there would be buses from Sainsbury’s car park into the town centre and there would be a staircase from the Waitrose up to the town centre. They say, “There would be all sorts of benefits for the people of Malmesbury. Aren’t they lucky to have us, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, coming to build in the town?” But, no, we are not lucky at all. Waitrose and Sainsbury’s are going there for one reason only: to make a profit for their shareholders out of selling groceries to passing trade. That is of no benefit whatever to the town of Malmesbury, and I very much hope that the local authority, when it considers this matter, will turn down both applications—from Waitrose and Sainsbury’s.

Malmesbury has a vibrant and superb high street with a great community, which is not dissimilar to that in neighbouring Royal Wootton Bassett. If we allow the building of two new supermarkets on the outskirts of the town or of housing, which has also been threatened around the outskirts of Malmesbury, we will land up with urban sprawl of the worst possible kind and with a reduction in the vibrancy of the high street, which would become similar to those in one or two other towns in our area. I appeal to the planners who are sitting in Trowbridge this very afternoon considering these matters to realise that if we allow developers to build on greenfield sites, that is precisely what they will do because they want to build on greenfield sites. Only by preventing them from doing so will we force them to build in our town centres, to redevelop brownfield sites and to redevelop and add vibrancy to our town centres.