High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill

Debate between Gavin Robinson and Kerry McCarthy

2nd reading
Friday 26th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[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.