High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill

Gavin Robinson Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 26th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure not only to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), but to support him in his endeavours with his private Member’s Bill. I appreciate his eloquent and considered contribution this morning.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am learning very quickly that, on private Members’ Bills Fridays, there is a collegiality in the House and a reciprocity in contributions, so I am very pleased to speak, recognising that I am doing so on a Bill that extends to England only. I did not want to intervene on the hon. Member to make this point, for fear of ruining his flow, but there is a wider point to make that extends beyond the scope of these days and beyond the constraints of money resolutions and so on: for as long as online retailers are paying significantly less in rates, tax and other burdens from Government than our high street retailers, we will not allow those high street retailers to flourish. When Marks & Spencer is paying in one year what Amazon pays in 20 years, we can see the challenges that are before those who wish to take the best aims of the hon. Member’s Bill and revitalise our high streets.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to give local authorities the ability to designate not just one high street but up to three high streets—high street areas that go beyond one street, to put it another way—for this purpose. I represent the city of Belfast and when I think of our high streets, I think of Donegall Place, Royal Avenue and Ann Street, all of which are within our city centre and constitute a high street. All have had challenges in the last decade or so.

The historical Primark building, an old bank, had a fire that effectively shut down the entire centre and its connecting roads for around three years. It is a heritage building that was being restored, and the fire had a cataclysmic effect on the economy, on trade and on people’s ability to meet and mingle in our city centre, so I entirely recognise the points that the hon. Gentleman makes.

In recognising what Belfast’s high streets have to offer, I should note that none of them is in my constituency. We need to recognise the neighbourhoods in our cities. The hon. Gentleman reflected on that within Stoke-on-Trent, where he can see six potential neighbourhoods that could constitute high street areas that should receive attention.

Some of the briefings in support of the Bill have quoted the Institute of Place Management and its co-chair, Professor Cathy Parker, who recognises that, in over 40% of the towns visited in pursuit of the high streets task force, there is no real partnership or governance to deliver the transformative change that our high streets need.

I declare my interest as a board member of EastSide Partnership, which does not touch on our town centre but is very much of east Belfast. As a partnership, it is solely focused on regeneration in all its forms. As a constituency MP, I am very proud of the partnership’s work and of the small and singular contributions that I and many others have made over the years.

[James Daly]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent point. Whether or not it is through this Bill, meaningful regeneration can happen only if people have pride in the area they either live in or come from, and that generally comes from a knowledge or understanding of the area’s history and heritage. From his experience of being a board member, does he see that sense of history and heritage being used to drive regeneration in Belfast?

[Gavin Robinson]

I do. First we need pride, commitment, passion and knowledge of what went before and what we want to achieve in the future. I want to share the beauty of the partnership in bringing all those strands together. The partnership was born from the need to tackle social deprivation and has become regenerative, but not in the traditional sense of simple physical regeneration.

As a partnership, we support business improvement districts and traders’ associations. Around the corner from my constituency office, work is happening on Belmont Road, Ballyhackamore and Newtownards Road. As arterial routes in my constituency, they all get support for their endeavours to make the best of their immediate location.

Within the broader neighbourhood, a recreational space spanning 16 km throughout the constituency, across three rivers, ties people together in an environmentally sustainable way that brings them out to mix and mingle. The Hub is in an area that was full of dilapidation, dereliction and social deprivation, and that was the target of much difficulty during the troubles. It has been totally transformed as an amazing civic space that celebrates C. S. Lewis, a son of Belfast who was brought up in my constituency and is world-renowned for his ability to write and speak theologically, as well as for being a professor and an author. It is a beautiful space and something that has completely transformed the area, which includes the Holywood Arches, which we are hoping to regenerate for business purposes.

At the bottom of Newtownards Road, there is a brand-new shared space—the Bridges doctors surgery—which is attended across the peace divide and which brings communities together for not only health, but physical regeneration through capital building and social investment funds. That delivers, on a neighbourhood basis, on exactly the aims of the Bill through shared experience, commitment and partnership.

At the other end of the constituency, in Ballybeen, round the corner from where I live, there is the second largest social housing estate in all of Northern Ireland—one that was blighted by the troubles. Ballybeen Square itself was full of dereliction until the predecessor of my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), Mrs Iris Robinson, totally regenerated the space in conjunction with the EastSide Partnership. It was done in a way that was connected with the local community. It provides a business hub, brings in council services and provides other community services, and it has transformed that area.

It is that passion and pride we have in our area and our ability to draw on our past, recognising not only the difficulties there have been but the vision and potential to deliver for our local people, that provide the elements for success. The intervention is absolutely right, and the point to highlight is that there are too few partnerships. Some 40% of towns need regeneration, and the high streets need to be reinvigorated. We do not need another committee set up for the sake of it. We do not do this because the high streets task force asked us to; we do it because we believe in our area and want to see it improved.

I share all that because I want to support the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South on his Bill, which will help to crystallise in a productive way the opportunity to reinvigorate high streets.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way. I was interested to hear what he said about the importance of preserving the history and legacy of our communities. On one of the longest high streets in my constituency—Church Road—which goes into the neighbouring constituency of Bristol West, hidden behind a Wetherspoons that has just closed we have an almost pristine art deco cinema. It opened in 1912 and was where the first silent films were shown. It has now become an asset of community value. The community is trying to buy it to turn it into a community hub. There are other people who are interested in turning it into housing. Although we have a great need for housing, having that as a centrepiece would encourage people to flock to Church Road to see that historical asset. I support what he was saying, because shops and housing are important, but those assets are important too.

[Gavin Robinson]

I thank the hon. Lady for that contribution because it allows me to move from CS Lewis Square, up the Holywood Road towards St Mark’s Church in Dundela, Bunker Hill. That was C. S. Lewis’s church, and it has his communion cup, which was donated by the family. Smack bang in the middle is the old Strand Cinema, which is now the Strand Arts Centre. For eight years—actually, from before I was a Member of Parliament, so for 10 years—I have been banging my head against a brick wall in support of the Strand Cinema, which is a beautiful pre-war, art deco cinema. There used to be one screen, probably the size of this Chamber, and it has now been divided into four screens—the old balcony is a separate screen.

We just secured £4.09 million from the levelling-up fund for the full restoration of Strand Arts Centre. I say genuinely to the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) that if there is a connection we can make between the two—if we can share the plans and show exactly what they are doing and hoping to deliver in my constituency—I would be more than happy to share that with her.

All that comes through partnership, and it is the partnership element that I want to impress on the debate. I chair a subsidiary of our partnership, which is EastSide Tourism. It is all about encouraging people to visit east Belfast. When I was leader of our party group in the council, there was an opportunity to allocate £105 million for leisure transformation across the city. Through one political deal or another, I got £48 million of that for what is now my constituency. Part of that was used to restore the heritage baths in east Belfast, the old public baths where people used to go after a hard day or a week’s work in the shipyard. They have now been completely restored and integrated into an all-singing, all-dancing, state-of-the art leisure centre. You may remember the old slipper baths, Mr Deputy Speaker: there is only one tap, you get six inches of hot water, and you can put in as much cold as you like. If you want a long bath, it is going to be freezing.

That drawing together of a new, regenerative leisure facility and our old industrial past and heritage, through our tourism initiative and as part of the wider regenerative partnership within our neighbourhood, shows what can be achieved when we have the necessary passion, will and determination, recognising where we have been and where, as a community, we want to go. The Bill focuses, rightly, on high streets, but within our wider cities and spaces there are neighbourhoods and communities with a passionate desire to make their localities better than they are today, and that is what should lie at the heart of our aspirations for our cities.