City and Town Centres: Regeneration

James Frith Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mr James Frith (Bury North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) on securing such an important debate for those of us who are a bit geeky on towns.

It is always nice to stand up in the presence of my good friend the Minister. This is the first time that I am in a position to address him as the Minister in a formal capacity, so let me congratulate him in the hope that it bumps me up the line for community ownership funding as we await the difficult decisions that the Labour Government have to take. First and foremost, I ask that bids that are already in do not fall victim to the general election, that there is no fancy footwork and that we can be assured that the funding bids that made the cut under a previous Administration will now receive funding and authority.

I am delighted to be back as the Member of Parliament for Bury North. My constituency has three key towns: Tottington, Ramsbottom and Bury itself. This debate is also about cities, but I want to remark specifically on the role of towns, which are often in the shadow of our greatest English cities, of which Manchester is the nearest to Bury. The plight of our football club shows that community assets are often diminished by policy or decisions taken about us without us. Towns feel ignored when decisions on cultural assets, social capital and economic capital that affect us are taken elsewhere.

People in Bury want a degree of self-determination. We have an innovative council that has been trying for well over 10 years to do as much as possible with a diminishing amount of money. Austerity continues, whether that is in the special educational needs crisis, in investment in our road networks or in whether we can afford to cut the weeds and make places look nice enough to visit. It is about the simple things, alongside bigger fixed items such as funding, having a plan and bringing the buses back into public ownership, as our friend Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester Mayor, has done so effectively. It is also about taking the last Conservative Government’s levelling-up analysis, which was accurate, and saying, “They were right with the analysis, but they forgot to do the impact assessment. They forgot to do the impact, full stop.”

It is not enough to point at projects that may or may not be funded and pit one local authority area or town against another in the “Hunger Games” style of funding that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has described. I ask the Minister for an assurance that the three-year pact with local authorities and the funding that we are due to get for our towns will both be clear as soon as possible after the Budget. I also ask that while waiting for the three-year pact, we do not drop the ball on what is required right now. Despite the financial inheritance of a £22 billion black hole, this Labour Government are saying, “We will not let the mess we have inherited determine every single decision we make about towns and cities and their redevelopment.” Self-determination is hugely important.

My final comment is about the assets that we enjoy in Bury, from Broad Street Social—I think I am allowed to mention my favourite bar and my good friend Jen Smith, who helped me to prepare my remarks—to Wax and Beans, which is a great independent record shop, Bloom, which is a terrific eatery and coffee shop, and a wine shop called Kwoff; the House is getting a bit of a sense of where I spend my time. Crucially, people need that time off work, whether it is through flexible working or through a rebalancing of expectations post-covid with their employer, to get out and spend their hard-earned money in the towns that we all want to see thriving. I welcome this debate, in which there is still plenty more to say, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North once again.

[Several hon. Members rose—]