Town Centres: Stoke-on-Trent

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Karl Turner (in the Chair)]

I will call Gareth Snell to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for town centres in Stoke-on-Trent.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for this debate, Mr Turner, and to see Mr Dowd offering you a skilled hand.

This year is the centenary of Stoke-on-Trent, which was founded as a city in 1925, following the federation of the six towns in 1910. It is a city based on a partnership of equals: there are six towns, of which I have the pleasure of representing three and a half; I share one of them with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner). As we look forward to the next 100 years, our city has to consider the future of its town centres, what we hope to achieve in them, and what role they can play in delivering the Government’s ambitious programme of growth, housing and economic regeneration.

The past 14 years have been tough for my city. Had the last Government simply kept our revenue grant at its 2010-11 level in cash terms, there would have been over £400 million extra to spend in over that time. As it happens, they did not, and year-on-year cuts by the last Government have left the city in a perilous financial state. That has led to an undignified situation in which Stoke-on-Trent is forced to bid against our neighbouring cities simply to have a share of any prosperity fund, levelling-up fund or other fund—an undignified beauty parade that fails to recognise that every town and city centre in this country deserves to thrive.

Town centres are more than places for shopping. The town centres that I represent in Fenton, Hanley, Stoke and a part of Longton are about pride, community and dignity of place. They not only have an economic benefit, but are the mesh that holds society together in our city.

[Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend join me in commending the fantastic work of the Longton Exchange team and Urban Wilderness in their commitment to regenerating Longton town centre? Does he also agree that we need much more work and investment to return Longton to its full glory?

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend has basically stolen one part of my speech, because I was going to congratulate Longton Exchange on the mini-renaissance that is taking place in that town, and in particular the work it does on the Longton carnival and the pig walk—unfortunately, I was unable to make it last year, but I very much intend to be there in April for this year’s. It is those sort of small cultural events—and the small but determined work of dogged individuals who love where they live and have pride in the place they call home—that will deliver the upturn and improvement to our town centres.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. There will not be a town centre in this great United Kingdom that does not suffer from the problem of online shopping, which takes trade away from the town centre. Does he agree that one of the things that could be done—we look to the Minister on this—is to help micro and small businesses in city centres with start-up funds? Those businesses bring people in, bring employment in and help the economy.

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman, as always, is absolutely right. He has hit the nail on the head. Whether it is Strangford or Stoke-on-Trent, the town centres and small and medium-sized enterprises, whether they are a service, a community organisation or retail, are sometimes the places that people have most affinity with because they have a personal relationship with the owner. In Stoke-on-Trent we find that the microbusinesses that can be run from someone’s garage or back bedroom thrive.

The big stores tend to be able to weather the economic climate that we find ourselves in, but for mid-sized shops the high street is probably just outside of financial reach because of business rates and because the footfall is not there. The high street is struggling because of the decisions of the last Government. Regardless of fault, things need to be addressed by the present Government. I have absolute confidence that the Minister and his team at the Department will do that.

I want to focus mostly on Hanley city centre, but I also want to pay tribute, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, to the amazing work in Longton. I will not repeat what she has already adequately and wonderfully put on the record, but I want to briefly talk about Fenton and Stoke. Fenton is a town that Arnold Bennett did not really forget. He took it out of the books because he did not like his mother-in-law, but that is an entirely different debate.

The work being done around Fenton town hall to turn the area into a vibrant community hub is fabulous; I am thinking of Ben Husdan and the community interest company that he works with, and Restoke, which runs the town hall, and the Step Up Stoke charities. I hold my surgeries in the café there and when I have time off I go there to enjoy the city that I live in and call home. The events run there draw people in from all over the west midlands; they have demonstrated that, with determination and a little bit of community spirit, something wonderful can be achieved. A model has been put together that could be used in other parts of Stoke-on-Trent.

I also want to pay tribute to the work being done by Jeff Nash and his team at the Spode site in Stoke. A hub is emerging there with support from levelling-up funds. To give credit to the last Government, they put some money in, as did the city council. The site demonstrates that the heritage buildings in my constituency, which are sometimes considered to be part of our past, can actually be part of our future. And that demonstrates that with a bit of imagination and a bit of support, which I know the Government are committed to, we can deliver real regeneration, new homes and good quality jobs for the new future for the city that I think is there.

I turn to Hanley—possibly the most challenging town centre of the six towns that make up Stoke-on-Trent. The Minister is aware of that because he kindly met me, along with Councillor Jane Ashworth, leader of Stoke-on-Trent council, chief exec Jon Rouse, and Rachel Laver, the wonderful chief executive of the Chambers of Commerce. For many years Hanley has been a challenge. It has been seen as, “If we fix Hanley, we fix everything else”, and there is an argument that that is correct. But the solutions have always dwarfed the scale of the challenge.

Like Hull, Mr Turner, Stoke-on-Trent deserved more from the last Government. We were given levelling-up funds, but the last Conservative council decided that the best thing they could do with the support offered was to build a car park. An economically deprived city’s working age people in in-work poverty were told that their lives were going to be levelled up with the building of a multi-storey, colourful car park on the edge of the city centre—and “That’s your lot!” That car park, ironically, is now costing the council money because it was so poorly planned and executed that the revenue it should have generated is not there. It is now a loss for the council, which is a demonstration of the legacy of the last Government.

On top of that, the last Conservative council made grand aspirational plans for arenas and shopping centres. On paper, they looked wonderful—what the artist’s impression showed would be wanted in every town centre. But there was no plan, no money and no intention. That is something that the council learned from the last Conservative Government when it comes to economic regeneration across this country.

We look to the Government not to solve our problems for us—I want to be clear to the Minister that I am not here with a begging bowl to ask for handouts; I firmly believe that the future of our city has to be driven by our city—but for them to join us in a new partnership by putting the governmental shoulder behind our municipal wheel. If we are able to forge a new partnership for the city centre, we will meet the housing demand. We can more than meet the demands placed on us by Government, and then some, if we have the land consolidation powers that Homes England executes, and if we had a self-replenishing fund for the pump-priming work, and could look at remediation of brownfield sites.

We have the building blocks in the city centre. The work done by Richard Buxton, Jonathan Bellamy and Rachel Laver, through the city centre’s business improvement district, is phenomenal. They almost always have a bright idea about something we could do in Stoke-on-Trent to bring people into the city, whether that is food markets or their work on supplementing the municipal support they should have had from a council suffering budget cuts. That is the wardens, street cleaning and street scene work.

We have good policing led by Sergeant Chris Gifford, doing their best to ensure that the city centre feels safe. That is also a challenge because of the reduction in drug and alcohol support services that the previous Government thrust upon us, meaning that people who need help cannot get it, so they gravitate to our town centre, causing a social problem.

[David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for this important debate. He notes that crime and antisocial behaviour is an issue that can put off people coming to our town centres. I hear the point about how we use levelling-up funds or certain types of funds to make our town centres better. A key to that is how we engage with local community leaders and retailers to ensure we get the plans right. We got £20 million, including £6.5 million to make improvements to Burslem, Tunstall and Middleport, and we are looking at how we—

[Karl Turner (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Gareth Snell]

I hear what my hon. Friend is saying, but in a half-hour debate I do not have time to address all his points. He is right that reduction in crime in the town centre helps people feel safe and brings in more people to spend money there. There is a virtuous circle of activity that is not just about getting more shops on the high street, but making people who come feel safer.

That also links to public transport. One of the conversations being pursued locally, through the bus improvement partnership and the work we hope might come from future reorganisation and devolution, is that we can massively improve our public transport network, so we can get the people into town centres who want to shop there. At the moment, we have a perverse situation in which the bus station is far away from the shopping centre. Walking down the hill to get there is fine, but walking back up the hill is far too much for some—particularly older members of my community, who simply cannot make the journey and do not go there. It is those small things we can do that will massively impact on economic benefits.

I want to pitch to the Minister something he knows we aspire to. The challenge we now face in Stoke-on-Trent is that we cannot do it alone. We are not asking for it to be done for us, but we cannot do it alone. We would like to explore, with the Government and some form of urban development company, a delivery vehicle that allows the master plan being put together by the city council and the chamber of commerce to have cross-governmental support, demonstrating to businesses in my city that we are taking this seriously.

The other problem we have had, which you will probably have experienced in Hull, Mr Turner, is that plan after plan is written, presented, goes on the shelf and is never seen again. People’s confidence that we can deliver the things we promise has been dented. By demonstrating that this partnership could exist between government locally and nationally would go a long way to getting the business buy-in, which is crucial to the regeneration of our city centre and high streets.

I also want to pitch to the Minister that certain powers come with that. We have brownfield sites across the city in our three constituencies that are ripe for development. But they are owned by people who have no interest in my city. They are often passed through different shell companies and corporations, because they are an asset that is traded, as opposed to being an asset of value to the city. Being able to access compulsory purchase arrangements that Homes England has for land consolidation, would mean we could parcel up those bigger sites for development.

That would allow us to develop city-centre living, for which there is a demand. The Clayworks development in the middle of Hanley has been so successful it has had a 90% occupancy rate from its first day of opening, which is completely unprecedented in the city. It is high-quality, affordable housing for young and aspiring professionals in a trendy setting. More of that in our city centre would bring people who have a disposable pound in their pocket to come and live, shop and work there. We also have two fabulous universities, which are clearly desperate to take some of the work they are doing to attract people to north Staffordshire to give them a night-time economy offer.

Some of the work, which the Minister is aware of, that we wish to do in the city centre links not only to the day-time retail offer, but to how we can turn our city centres into a night-time economy that people want to come and visit. That would support our restaurants, bars and wonderful theatres across the conurbation, and also links to the policing work so that people feel safe at night.

I welcome the work that the Government have already laid out. That includes the additional community policing that we will have in the town centres, which will absolutely reduce some of the latent antisocial behaviour and crime and is a deterrent, as well as the work we are doing on devolving bus powers so that we can have an integrated transport network to get people to where they need to be. I welcome the fact that this Government recognise that high street theft from shops—shoplifting—is a real problem. We will take it seriously and remove the arbitrary cap of £200, so that, if someone commits a crime in the city centre, we will come for them.

I also welcome the investment in drug and alcohol services, so that those in our town centres who are desperately seeking support from the very generous people of my city can get that support in a much more structured and maintained way. We must also make sure that our really ambitious housing targets are achieved in our town centres, so that we can bring people back to our town centres, invigorate them and bring them back to life, and also demonstrate—as we look toward the next 100 years of Stoke-on-Trent, in this, our centenary year—that we have a bright and prosperous future, driven by a partnership between the Stoke-on-Trent city council and this Labour Government.

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)]

It is an absolute pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Turner, as well as the reassuring presence of Mr Dowd at your side, stewarding the debate along. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) for securing this very important debate in Stoke-on-Trent’s centenary year.

My hon. Friend is a doughty champion for his constituency. Although the city, as he rightly said, has experienced hard times over recent years, his constituents should know that, from the outset of this Government coming into office, he has been pressing me on what more this Labour Government can do, in partnership with local leaders and my hon. Friends, to ensure that we maximise the opportunities in the city as we go forward. I share his passion to support the regeneration of the town centres of Stoke-on-Trent and to create better places to live, work and play across the city.

My hon. Friend referenced the meeting we had just a few weeks ago, alongside members of the council, to discuss their plans for a comprehensive regeneration of Stoke-on-Trent city centre. It was clear from that meeting that they are keen to make sure that the city plays a full role in delivering on the Government’s growth strategy, including delivering on a substantial number of new homes, as part of our Plan for Change milestone to build 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament.

Stoke-on-Trent city centre is facing the same problems as many town centres across the country: lower occupancy rates and footfall due to consumer habits changing, which make a retail, office-led city centre strategy difficult for the future. I have been pleased to see, in the case of Stoke-on-Trent—as well as other cities across the country where Labour Members and Labour local leaders are in place—that the new Labour-run city council, under the leadership of Councillor Jane Ashworth, has brought forward a committed and energetic programme and a serious plan for Hanley to take things forward, which will see a radical shift to a residential-led model, aiming to create a revitalised city centre that can play a strengthened socioeconomic role and unlock the development of thousands of new homes, through the process that we discussed.

It has been good to see that so much of the regeneration in Stoke-on-Trent is already well under way. My hon. Friend has referenced a number of the very positive changes that are taking place, including the Smithfield Quarter, a fantastic mixed-use development that pays homage to the original Smithfield bottle works on the site and is an excellent example of intertwining cultural heritage while also looking to the future needs of the city.

The Government have supported this vital regeneration work through Homes England, which has been working successfully with the council for many years. In 2022, a partnership agreement was signed with the council to accelerate the delivery of high-quality, place-making, housing-led and mixed-use developments in the city. The partnership aims to unlock, as my hon. Friend is aware, 4,000 homes across a range of sites within the city, and has to date supported 607 homes across several sites.

The city has also been in receipt of considerable capital investment from Homes England over recent years, including £22 million of affordable housing programme investment and £10 million of housing infrastructure grant investment to unlock a combined 1,500 homes. Through that partnership, significant strides have been made to progress 13 priority sites in the council’s pipeline, and support the council’s local plan review.

Homes England has also provided around £800,000 in revenue funding to support the delivery of priority sites. As my hon. Friend will be aware, some of the key interventions that have taken place include: Homes England acting in collaboration with the city council, procuring and jointly leading the production of a city centre masterplan, providing a connected vision for Stoke and Hanley; and a serious delivery plan—I think that is the point—with clear evidence steps for the development of that key strategic corridor.

We have also seen progress on several flagship sites across the city, providing a catalyst for the regeneration that needs to happen and that I know my hon. Friend is working hard to see delivered. Etruscan Square, for example, is a major city centre development to regenerate the former bus station site in Hanley, which has secured outline planning permission for a 300-home mixed-used development, following on from receiving £20 million of Government funding in 2021. The North Shelton opportunity area is a collection of three brownfield sites; through our brownfield land release fund, the council has been rewarded money to remediate the site and make way for up to 50 homes.

To reiterate the point that my hon. Friend made, we need to see that partnership working continue. I urge local leaders to continue to press forward with that ambition across the whole city, and I have impressed on Homes England the need to continue supporting Stoke-on-Trent with the necessary skills, powers and investment needed to bring forward development, including on known complex brownfield sites in Hanley town centre, at the nearest possible opportunity. As my hon. Friend knows, I am committed to working with him and others to ensure that we are utilising all the powers that are already available, or that the Government intend to bring forward, to ensure that we realise the full potential of the city, including powers in relation to compulsory purchase orders, as was referenced.

Despite the previous Administration making a number of unfunded commitments to local authorities and mayoral combined authorities, at October’s Budget this Government confirmed that the majority of local growth projects have been protected, and that the UK shared prosperity fund has been extended for another year, providing much needed certainty for places to deliver locally. My hon. Friend will also be aware that Stoke-on-Trent received £56 million towards key regeneration sites across the city through the levelling-up fund, supporting both housing and broader economic development.

[Gareth Snell]

On the point about funding, we got £8 million in the recovery fund, and I am reliably informed by the Minister’s Department that this was the second largest recovery fund settlement anywhere in the country. I thank the Department for that, because it is a huge recognition of the financial challenges we have had in the past and a down payment on what I hope and believe to be the interest that the Department will take in Stoke-on-Trent going forward.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will pass on my hon. Friend’s appreciation to ministerial colleagues in the Department who oversaw that decision. He can take as given that the funding awarded is a recognition of the importance we place on revitalising cities such as Stoke-on-Trent.

The Goods Yard is another great example of creating new city centre living opportunities, with new apartments alongside work and leisure spaces and next to the main train station. I look forward to overseeing the opening of that in the coming months. More recently, £6.5 million of additional Government funding has been agreed to support public realm regeneration in Tunstall, Longton, Stoke, Burslem, and Middleport, as part of Stoke-on-Trent’s levelling up partnership. In Tunstall, I have been heartened to see the planned artworks to celebrate the town’s heritage and brighten up the area.

I will touch briefly on planning reforms. As hon. Members will be aware, the Government consulted on changes to national planning policy, and other changes to the planning system, last year. Having reviewed the available evidence and feedback from the consultation, we published our formal response and a revised national planning policy framework on 12 December.

The revised NPPF supports the role of high streets and town centres, by expecting local plans to create a positive framework for their growth and adaptation. It also expects planning applications for town centre uses—defined as retail, development, leisure, entertainment and more intensive sport and recreation uses, as well as offices, arts, culture and tourism development—to be located in town centres where possible, to support their viability and inhibit trade from being drawn to other locations.

The planning and infrastructure Bill, which will be forthcoming later this year, will speed up and streamline the planning process to build more homes of all tenures and accelerate the delivery of major infrastructure projects, aligning with our industrial, energy and transport strategies. The Bill will make improvements at a local level, modernising planning committees and increasing local planning authorities’ capacity to deliver the type of interventions that I have referenced today and deliver an improved service. It will also support more effective land assembly for development in the public interest by reforming the compulsory purchase process. I know that in many parts of the country—Stoke is a great example of this—fragmented and complex land ownership can be a real barrier to development.

[Gareth Snell]

What the Minister has just said is music to my ears, because this is not just about compiling the land that we know is available for development; it is about the consequential impact of that. If we can bring that land together in Stoke-on-Trent, we will be able to protect our greenfield sites from unnecessary development. The more we can do to put houses in Hanley, the greater our chances are of protecting Berryhill Fields, in the middle of my constituency, which are the green lungs of north Staffordshire.

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This Government have a brownfield-first approach to development. In all instances where it is possible, we want to see brownfield development prioritised and accelerated, and we are making a number of changes to ensure that is the case. These include not only some of the revisions we made to the NPPF, but the proposals that we have outlined in our brownfield passport working paper, which will feed into the development of national development management policies, which we will consult on later this year. All of these interventions are to ensure that, wherever possible, we can get brownfield-led development.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that in many parts of the country that fragmented ownership of land is a real barrier. We want generally to see more coherent land assembly and master planning of large sites to ensure that we can maximise their potential, not least in terms of density and getting the number of homes we need on site. In that way, in many parts of the country, it will be possible to avoid having to look at green belt release, although we are clear that where green belt does need to be released—and grey belt as a priority release within that—that does need to take place to meet local housing targets.

To conclude, I again thank my hon. Friend for bringing this important debate to the House today and for his ongoing engagement. I would like to assure him and the city council that the Government recognise the vital role that Stoke-on-Trent will play in our growth mission. We want to see councils across the country working in collaboration and partnership with the Government to create a sustainable and suitable housing supply for those who live in and commute to town and city centres. I very much look forward to working with him and my hon. Friends to that end.

Question put and agreed to.