Heritage Sites: Sustainability

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Tuesday 20th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) on securing this important debate, because heritage sites and tourism mean so much to people in places like Stoke-on-Trent, Kidsgrove and Talke. I will start with a success story that shows what can be done to sustain important icons in our communities. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), visited Middleport pottery. I was delighted that he was able to see it; it is just a shame that he did not visit with a much sounder group of individuals like me, but I understand he was there in a party political capacity. Anyway, I am glad that he was able to see that fantastic work.

All thanks to His Majesty King Charles III: his charities came in and turned Middleport pottery around. It is a great icon of our history and heritage that was on the verge of crumbling and falling down. Today, it is a continuously working factory—the only factory in the world where pottery is still handmade and hand-printed. Every piece of Burleigh is unique to its owner.

Middleport pottery is opening up and giving tourists the opportunity to see a working factory in action, and to be involved in arts and crafts. It has developed the Harper Street project, which has an excellent veterans support network; it creates artwork for local veterans to sell. That gives them skills and ambition for the future, and helps them to tackle their physical and mental health ailments. There are fantastic organisations, such as Middleport Matters Community Trust, led by Vicki Gwynne, who does tremendous work. It ensures that young people and mothers get the support that they need all year round, through holiday activities and food programmes. It is linked to the Hubb Foundation, and gives important community support.

Channel 4 has used Middleport pottery for “The Great Pottery Throwdown”. Canal scenes in “Peaky Blinders” were filmed there. The site has been used diversely to bring in a sustainable income. The factory produces an awful lot of heat, so that is shared around the complex to drive down energy costs. Also, many volunteers kindly give up their time to support that success.

The greatest honour I have had as a Member of Parliament was seeing those at the heart of this Government—the Cabinet—have a regional away day in the Middleport pottery building. Hosting a Cabinet meeting, and knowing that those decision makers were in the community, was iconic for the people of Stoke-on-Trent. These local charities and organisations would maybe never otherwise be able to access Ministers at first hand; having them on their doorstep sent a real signal of intent and seriousness. I congratulate Boris Johnson, the former Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, on doing that. It was a big decision, and it meant a lot to the people of Stoke-on-Trent. I am delighted that Middleport pottery also recently received £249,962 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Middleport pottery is a success story, but there are many challenges. Stoke-on-Trent is littered with beautiful buildings and historic heritage. The mother town of Burslem has many of those buildings. The Queen’s Theatre, the Victorian Burslem indoor market and the Wedgwood Institute are three iconic buildings. The city council recently found that it would cost between £30 million and £40 million to bring them back to life. Through feasibility studies, the council has been looking at what could be done with those spaces.

The indoor market—a fantastic building—had the Office for Place visit it; being the cheapest of the three, I think it is a real goer. It could be not only a great venue for meetings and conferences, but a performing arts space. Street food stalls could be set up there. An iconic building could be brought back into use. It was recently listed, which is important, because it gave us access to funds that were unavailable before. Stoke-on-Trent City Council took the risk of bringing the building back under the public purse. The council wants to see it future-proofed and used, so that Burslem can continue to thrive.

I welcome the Minister to come and see at first hand that iconic sight, and to stop off at the mighty Port Vale football club. There is another football team in the south of the city, but we do not need to worry about them quite as much. Port Vale are a great football team, and the Minister would be more than welcome there. Port Vale’s promotion from league 2 to league 1 has helped bring an awful lot of extra footfall into the mother town of Burslem. That supports pubs and independent restaurants, such as Agie and Katie, an award-winning west midlands food provider, as well as The Bull’s Head in Burslem, near the fantastic Titanic Brewery; it is a great epicentre.

There is one building that is iconic to the history of not just the city but the country: the Leopard pub. Sadly, arsonists attacked this important building and caused tremendous damage. It is where Josiah Wedgwood and James Brindley met to discuss and plan the Trent and Mersey canal, which fuelled so much of the industrial revolution across the city. Now, potentially just the frontage can be kept. The new owners are talking about turning the building into housing. I hope that can be done, but Government support is required to move those plans forward.

Price and Kensington teapot works is another important site. I am grateful to the Government for supporting my ten-minute rule Bill and including it in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. It means that the current capped fine of £1,000 for someone found guilty under section 215 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 will be unlimited for the first offence, and will go up from £100 to £500 a day for a second offence. That will help us hold to account rogue and absent landlords, such as Charles Lewis and Co, which owns that great heritage site and was today fined up to £72,000 for its misuse. I hope that people such as Simon Davies of Kidsgrove, a local businessman, will come forward with plans to take over the site and deliver a new arts and cultural centre. It will be a corridor into Stoke-on-Trent north, off the A500. That would be really powerful, and would support the tourism industry. It would go into Middleport pottery, using the canal network.

Finally, there is a great sleeping giant that I have been proud to bang on about time and again: Chatterley Whitfield colliery, which is the largest complete deep coal mine site in Europe. It was the first colliery in the country to dig up 1 million tonnes of coal, and it did so not just once but twice. I congratulate Nigel Bowers, who in the recent honours list was recognised for his public service, and for standing up for such fantastic local charitable organisations. Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Historic England, the Chatterley Whitfield Friends and I have come up with a plan to make the colliery a really exciting centre for geothermal exploration; it can be used as a trial. The Coal Authority has revealed that there is pre-existing infrastructure that could help develop a mine energy project with a heat pump that can bring heat from the ground to the surface and power homes. The Coal Authority estimates that the site could generate about 1 MW of energy—enough to power 500 homes. I hope the Minister will take that back, feed it into Government and make the most of the opportunity to bring to that important site the investment that we need if we are to turn around that sleeping giant, which I want to see flourish.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Just a bit of housekeeping: I expect to call the Opposition spokespeople at 5.16 pm, and I will give the mover of the motion a couple of minutes to wind up, so hon. Members have no more than five minutes each. Try to keep it under five minutes, please.