High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill

Jacob Young Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 13th March 2024 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Are all colleagues happy? Right. I call the Minister.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)]

Thank you, Sir Charles. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I am grateful for the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South on this issue, and I am pleased to speak in the Committee on this important Bill.

As my hon. Friend laid out, the Bill will ensure that local authorities effectively use their powers to support high streets in their areas to perform well, and to drive improvements where that is not the case. This will be a valuable tool in enabling us to meet our ambition of creating thriving high streets and town centres. I am sure it will come as no surprise to my hon. Friend that I support all the amendments he has tabled. They are largely technical in nature, but they are important to ensure that the Bill has its intended effect of strengthening high streets across the country.

Clause 1 introduces a new duty on local authorities to designate high streets in their area, meaning that local authorities will need to carefully consider and identify streets of specific economic, social and cultural importance in their area that may require particular attention to ensure that they are performing well.

Amendments 1 and 3 to 8 will ensure that local authorities are able to designate a network of streets in their area, as well as a single street or part of a street, as a high street for the purposes of the Bill. That will ensure that high streets made up of a crossroads or a flow of streets are not overlooked or misrepresented. While technical in nature, the amendments are important to the Bill’s effectiveness and reflective of how people view their high street. They will mean that streets such as Nottingham Road, between Loughborough town centre and the station, could be brought into scope. In my constituency, they will mean that the High Street in Redcar can also include Station Road and Queen Street.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Brereton]

I thank the officials.

[Jacob Young]

I would like to thank the officials.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill, as amended, accordingly to be reported.