High Street Businesses: Government Support

Debate between David Chadwick and Olly Glover

Thursday 4th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for high street businesses.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. For decades, centuries and even millennia, towns and their high streets have been the focus of commercial and community activity—not just for the towns themselves, but for surrounding villages and rural communities. Whether it is for market day, celebrating great events such as VE Day, essential services such as banking and laundrettes, or spending time eating and drinking with friends and family, high streets and urban centres have long offered so much. However, across the country, our high streets and their businesses are struggling as never before. Too many, sadly, are falling into disrepair, with empty shops, cracked pavements, antisocial behaviour and crime, and streets strewn with waste.

Such issues are seen across the country. The 2025 Simply Business “SME Insights Report” on small and medium-sized enterprises found that more than half, or 63%, of small businesses believed that the high street as we know it will be obsolete in the next 10 years. This debate is an important opportunity to set out why central Government support is essential for high street businesses to thrive.

My constituency has three towns. I will say a little about the challenges and opportunities that they each face, before covering three key themes on the support that they and other high streets and businesses need. Didcot is the largest town in my constituency. It has seen huge housing growth in recent years, a trend that continues with the ongoing development of Valley Park. The town centre does not have a single focus, such as a traditional market square. Instead, it has two key areas: an older high street called the Broadway and a new retail park called the Orchard Centre.

Both the Broadway and the Orchard Centre face the challenges of antisocial behaviour and shoplifting; far more co-ordination between police, local authorities and businesses is needed. Didcot Broadway contains a range of shops, cafés, takeaways and restaurants. I thank Little India for the fantastic paneer jalfrezi that I got for a takeaway on Monday evening. Broadway also has the wonderful Mulberry pub at its western end. The Broadway forms the centre of the town, but businesses face many challenges, including the presence of the popular Orchard Centre retail park close by.

Amer Siddique, owner of Snack@Teas, formed a group of local business owners and is a passionate advocate for investment in the Broadway and town centre. I shall explore a number of those business owners’ concerns in my speech. Didcot’s last bank closed this year, despite the town’s population having grown to more than 32,000. It remains to be seen how well a proposed banking hub will fill that void. Parking in the town is a big concern as well, as a result of the rising population, although I am pleased that the Orchard Centre listened to vociferous local concerns and changed its mind on introducing car-parking charges.

In the east of my constituency, Wallingford is the smallest of the three towns, but more than makes up for that with its history, which goes back to Anglo-Saxon times. Its town centre high streets have a range of small businesses, full of character, such as the independent Wallingford Bookshop and Le Clos, a wine bar also offering amazing food, including tarte flambée with a range of toppings—baked flatbreads originating in the Alsace region of France. A key challenge for an ancient town is how to accommodate car traffic and parking to maintain visitor levels, given the large towns and cities fairly nearby. There is also frustration in Wallingford that NHS criteria seemingly prevent more than one pharmacy being able to serve the town.

Finally, Wantage is the second largest town in my constituency and the birthplace of King Alfred. In Wantage, the great Market Place is lined with independent shops, cafés and restaurants, with a retail park in the town centre, too. Wantage’s Argos store has been shut for two years, and New Look has now closed its doors as well, so vacant premises are a concern and many existing businesses highlight the crippling impact of significantly increased business rates—including the Vaults bar and pizza restaurant, the Kings Arms pub and the Bear Hotel, the last of which reports a doubling of its business rate charges. Consultation and debate are ongoing about how to further improve Wantage Market Place, which is dominated by car parking and bus stops. Special events that see Market Place closed to traffic, including the annual Dickensian evening, are popular and see the place filled with visitors.

The three towns, and their high street businesses, have three themes at the heart of their challenges and concerns, the first of which is the growing burden of business taxation and costs. Local businesses are feeling hammered by rising costs and barriers to their growth and hiring people; they feel there is an unfair playing field, given that online businesses are not taxed in the same ways and to the same degree. They feel that business rates are a flawed tax that is not directly related to either income or profit. Businesses in my constituency feel that recent Government changes to business rates have done little to ease the difficult situations they face, and certainly fall well short of the radicalism that was at least implied in Labour’s 2024 manifesto.

[David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)]

I salute the speech that my hon. Friend is giving; I am seeing the same situation play out in my constituency. Brecon has one of the most beautiful high streets in Wales, with its gorgeous Georgian buildings, but local businesses are telling me exactly the same thing. They are taking an absolute hammering from this Government’s decision to push through business rate revaluations. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a real concern? Does he believe that the VAT cut to hospitality that the Liberal Democrats are calling for would at least help to restore some activity, life and profit to our hospitality businesses?

[Olly Glover]

I agree that such a VAT cut would help, because it is not just business rates that small businesses on high streets are facing. On top of business rate increases and the burden of value-added tax, they are also paying for increased labour and payroll costs, including the higher national living wage and increased employer national insurance contributions. Some of those measures are understandable, and they will of course be welcomed by some, but the story I hear from my high street businesses is that the cumulative impact of all these things in a small space of time is creating challenges. Many businesses are also still servicing debts from the covid-19 pandemic, such as repaying bounce back loans, which further restricts their finances to ride out the current challenges or invest in the future.

Electricity, wage costs, business rates and general taxation are adding up to a perfect storm when combined with ongoing cost of living pressures for consumers, which affect demand. Constrained finances in high street businesses have a knock-on effect on their capacity, meaning that owners are particularly reluctant to hire entry-level or younger workers. That is exacerbated by the recent compression of the wage floor with changes to national insurance contributions and the national living wage.

While recognising the benefits of such changes for workers, businesses raised concerns in Alan Milburn’s interim report, “Young people and work”, saying that these pressures make them consider reducing staffing altogether, or hiring fewer, more experienced workers. This affects the flexibility of the businesses to staff correctly against fluctuating footfall, and reduces opportunities for entry-level workers. Labour is effectively one of the few remaining adjustable cost bases within owners’ control, and it is suffering accordingly.

High street retailers continue to adjust to the changing nature of consumer behaviour, such as online competition and destination shopping. There is a lack of consistent support available to high street businesses at a local level to support retailers through these challenges, and I will come on to say a little bit more about that.

The second key theme is transport and access, which is a key challenge as a result of population growth and central Government housing targets. A growing amount of car traffic, competing for a constrained amount of car parking in town centres, creates real challenges, particularly in older towns such as Wallingford. That is why the reality is that more must be done to help those who can, and would like to, walk and cycle by providing them with safer and better options for doing so. For example, cycle parking can reassure them that their bicycle will be safe.

At this point, I should say that when we get into a debate about transport, it is often presented as an either/or between cars and public transport, walking and cycling. However, those things are not mutually exclusive. The Netherlands does not just have a globally leading cycling infrastructure and culture; it has the most comprehensive motorway in Europe, as well as a fully electrified mainline railway network. Public transport, walking and cycling are complementary to cars—we need both. Even small increases in the use rates of public transport, walking and cycling can help to ease congestion and free up parking spaces for those who need them.

Investment in roads, pavements and general town centre infrastructure is also a concern. Poorly maintained pavements can be a barrier for older residents and those with mobility issues, increasing the risk of falls and discouraging visits to the town centre. Improving accessibility would help to attract more visitors and support local businesses.

The third theme is local government funding pressures. Of course, many small businesses in my constituency, entirely understandably, look to local councils to help them with their high street and business challenges. I want to explain why local councils are too affected by central Government policy and face reduced budgets amidst growing costs.

With their origins in European Union funding streams, South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse district councils have, until now, benefited from allocations from two funds: the UK shared prosperity fund and the rural England prosperity fund. Between them, those funding streams have supported more than 130 local projects across the councils so far. Projects were hugely varied, but they included grants to support businesses and community groups with a transition to more efficient and affordable energy use—pubs and cafés, for example. They also included providing capital investment into equipment that supports productivity gains, funding a huge range of business and skills support programmes, often targeting those most at need; developing a visitor economy support programme to support our market towns; and making several small-scale improvements to the public realm across the two districts.

Unfortunately, this Labour Government have decided to scrap those funds, and their replacements, Pride in Place and the local growth fund, are principally targeted at city regions and areas of high deprivation. The impact of the abolition of the two funds is not trivial. In 2025-26, the allocations from the two funds across the Vale of White Horse and South Oxfordshire districts were £1 million; in 2024-25, the total was £2.4 million. At the same time, changes to local government funding formulae mean that Oxfordshire county council will lose £24 million in funding over the next three years.

Those changes affect all three councils’ abilities to invest in high streets and support local businesses. They also make it harder for them to explore new ideas, such the ones requested by the town councils of the three towns I mentioned: grants to town and parish councils to invest in civic pride, such as floral planting, hanging baskets, more street cleaning and more ways to promote local shopping; or funding to employ town centre managers to link the town council with retail centres and independent traders.

I want to set out my key asks of central Government. Once again, the Government need to go much further in reforming business rates—a form of taxation that bears little resemblance to a business’s earnings. Does the Minister recognise that evidence submitted to Alan Milburn’s interim report into young people not in education, employment or training identified labour costs as a key concern? The Government, to their credit, have announced serious intentions in relation to energy prices, but what should be done in the meantime, particularly with no sign—very sadly—of war in the middle east abating?

Once again, will the Minister heed Liberal Democrat calls for a 5% cut to VAT for hospitality? Does he agree that taxation arrangements need modernisation, given the rising threat to physical businesses posed by online retail? Given rising demand and the same amount of space for car parking, do the Government agree that greater investment in public transport and walking and cycling infrastructure is needed to make it easier for people who need to drive to have the road space and car parking to do so?

What fresh, new ideas do the Government have to help our high streets? I have a few examples to consider. National “buy local” schemes would incentivise and reward people for spending their money locally. A “high streets back home” scheme would give people a clear route to invest in their own community, whether by restoring heritage building, supporting local enterprise or helping to secure community assets. The Government could give councils the power to designate independent shop zones, protecting and championing small locally owned businesses against the tide of chains and empty units.

Does the Minister accept that, for councils not benefiting from Pride in Place funding, including in Oxfordshire, the end of the UK shared prosperity and rural England prosperity funds constitute a cut to local government funding? That undermines their ability to invest in staff and initiatives to help small businesses improve town centres, and to award grants to businesses and community organisations to help them reduce their energy bills or upgrade their equipment. Our high streets and local businesses are critical to the successes of our towns and surrounding communities, and I call on the Government to give them the support that they deserve.

Department for Transport

Debate between David Chadwick and Olly Glover

Wednesday 25th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)]

I praise and thank the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) for her wide-ranging opening speech to this important debate. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving time for it.

There is much to welcome in the spending review announcements for transport, particularly the capital investment in many parts of the country, but it is going to be important to hold the course and be consistent in the support for such schemes. For example, proposals for a West Yorkshire tram have been in and out so many times that people living in that region have understandably lost count. Hopefully, this time it really will happen.

Beneath the positive headlines about capital spending, and hidden a little in the footnotes, is a 5% cut to operational expenditure during the spending review period. Looking at the detail, there are some somewhat optimistic assumptions that form the basis of how that will be borne. For example, in section 1.7 of the DFT memorandum for the main estimate 2025-2026, it is clear that the assumption as to how some of those savings will be made is through ongoing recovery of passenger revenues since the pandemic, as well as planned cost efficiencies from rail reform. It states,

“Should revenue growth be lower or implementation of rail reform be slower than anticipated then that could result in spending pressures.”

Although Great British Railways certainly has the potential to improve things, I think all concerned would accept that on its own, it will not solve all our problems.

Given that our transport system is not going anywhere —we are not going to see closures of railways or large cuts—I think it is time that we collectively stop viewing it as a burden and spend intelligently to make the most of the assets and the costs that come with them. By spending a little bit more or approaching things a little radically, we can make far more of those sunk costs that go into our transport system and will continue regardless.

It is important to recognise the suggestions at the moment that funding for the existing network may well be constrained by the expensive disaster that the implementation of HS2 has become. We do need high-speed rail in this country, but the costs are simply unbelievable. However, I suggest to the Government that it would be as wrong to punish the conventional network for HS2’s failings as it would be to deprive local roads of investment because of an over-budget motorway project.

Here are a few friendly suggestions to the Minister and his colleagues for how that 5% operating expense gap could be plugged by growing revenue. When it comes to taking the railway to the next level, there are some things that cost very little, if anything, that could be done. I personally find on-train ticket checks to be inconsistent. Where guards are present, they really should be present on the train, ensuring that we maximise revenue gathering from ticket sales. Full electrification of our busiest and fastest inter-city and freight routes would lead to higher train reliability, better acceleration and therefore more capacity, making the most of what we already have. It is not just me who thinks that a rolling programme of electrification would reduce costs; chief executive of Network Rail Andrew Haines recently said in front of the Transport Committee that it is “incontrovertible” that it would do so.

[David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the electrification of railway lines boosts capacity and enables them to ship more freight across our great nation?