Seaside Towns (Regeneration)

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby, and to see so many colleagues from all parts of the perimeter of this country here today.

I am sure that the Minister was as pleased as I was when the Prime Minister described tourism as one of the best and fastest ways of generating the jobs that the country so badly needs. For too long, it has been the Cinderella business sector. It has been ignored for many years, but the Prime Minister put it on the pedestal that it deserves.

No one would be here today if they did not recognise the value of tourism to their constituency. In Thanet alone, it is valued at £162 million a year. We want to ensure that the tourism sector grows, that the small businesses in it thrive, and that new businesses are created in our coastal regions. Tourism and the associated economic activity are critical to our future.

Coastal communities are what I call pocket economies. They do not always react in the same way as the rest of the country; they often behave counter-cyclically. When the rest of the economy was thriving in the 1980s, seaside towns, and Thanet in particular, were suffering. During the Brown boom, Thanet did not benefit from the economic vibrancy of the rest of the country. Deprivation increased, worklessness was not addressed, and property prices rose only modestly. Coastal communities lag behind the rest of the economy and, in some instances, are passed by altogether.

Coastal communities have much more in common with one another than with their prosperous neighbours. If we compare Thanet with Canterbury, which is a mere 20-mile drive away, in Thanet, average salaries are £60 a week less than in Canterbury, there is double the number of jobseeker’s allowance claimants, and vacancies are 25% of those available in Canterbury. There is no guarantee that our pocket economies will necessarily benefit from any upturn in the general economy. We also have high levels of public sector jobs, and few, if any, large company employers. Currently, my constituency is the 64th most deprived district in the country—not exactly the profile one would expect in the south-east.

On a positive note, perhaps the lack of modernisation and development can deliver a unique proposition. Cloned high streets have passed us by, large hotel chains and restaurants prefer more central locations, and developers have looked for easier pickings. We are unusual and quirky, and we have personality and character—a rarity in the world which should offer us a competitive edge. Thanet has 26 miles of sandy beaches, cliffs like those in the Algarve, walks suitable at any time of the year, and architecture that rivals any in the country. It is an historic mecca: from the Romans to the Beatles, we have had it all, with every invasion other than the Norman conquest and every major war fought from Thanet’s shores, and we have all the sights that go with those great British triumphs.

Two weeks ago, Thanet was nominated as one of the 12 most desirable locations in the world—can hon. Members believe that? We were celebrated in the same breath as Rio de Janeiro, Santiago in Chile, and Stockholm. This week, one of our local hotels was named the best small hotel in the country, and we have many more hotels and bed and breakfasts like it. However, we need a step change. We need to change the way in which our coastal towns are perceived and marketed. Traditionally, seaside towns have been marketed as locations for the sunny summer months but, to maximise the opportunities and great visitor experiences, we need clear strategies to increase significantly our out-of-season business.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. I represent what is perhaps an unknown part of the country in west Wales—the Ceredigion coastline. The hon. Lady is getting to the point where she is really talking about responsibility for the branding of our respective areas. I applaud local initiatives such as the Cambrian Mountains initiative, and I have hopes for the promotion of Cardigan bay. Who will be responsible for branding? Will we rely on local initiatives, or do we expect—and, I hope, anticipate—more of a lead from the centre, in particular VisitBritain?

[Laura Sandys]

Those are certainly questions for the Minister, but I think that what we need to do centrally more than anything else is to change the perception of seaside towns. The view is that if we put a beach on the website, the tourists will come over the summer months—and they do. Certainly Thanet does not need as much input for the summer months. However, we need to ensure that people appreciate the area whatever the time of year. I was walking on a beach with snow on it, and it was stunning. We have to understand that there is an all-year-round marketing opportunity.

Further to what my hon. colleague rightly said, we need a Minister for out-of-season marketing. Last weekend, I looked at the VisitBritain and VisitEngland websites. In many ways, they do a great job promoting this country, but it took six clicks to reach one seaside resort—Eastbourne—and no other. Under “things to do”, there is no mention of seaside towns. In the packages that they present for Canterbury and Lincoln, there is no suggestion that visitors extend their stay by a couple of days to visit the beauty of Thanet or Skegness, only a few miles down the road.

I accept that this is not an obvious time to visit our beaches, but I would like to ask the Minister what he thinks about the beaches in Weston-super-Mare at this time of the year. Would families not love to visit the SeaQuarium in Weston-super-Mare on their way to Wookey Hole? We need to ask our tourism marketers to be more creative about the opportunities that they offer to extend the season in areas that have been wrongly pigeonholed as summer locations, to think creatively about how they can add economic value and play a part in the regeneration of our coastal communities with taxpayers’ pounds, and not just be offered as window dressing for locations that are already international household names.

Extending the season is crucial for us all. If we could achieve that, we would increase revenues by 15% to 25%, increase employment, which is currently seasonal, and support our high streets and small retailers. That must be a crucial objective for us all. We need to be on the main websites all year around—that is fundamental—so changing the mentality of the marketers is crucial.

We must also look at what other countries do very successfully, not least social tourism, which is a concept not well understood in the UK; frankly, it is not understood at all. It is about offering out-of-season opportunities to people on lower incomes, people with disabilities and older people. The models range from those that involve public subsidy to those that cost the Government nothing. The Belgian tourism body will not register a hotel or holiday establishment that does not provide free or discounted holiday nights out of season. At no cost to the public purse, it incentivises accommodation owners to ensure that they provide discounted offers. In Spain, the Imerso scheme, which offers senior citizens off-peak holiday breaks by the sea, has led to a 10% increase in tourism revenue and a 16% increase in tourism employment. In France, 135,000 establishments accept vouchers available for those on low incomes, generating €3 billion for the French tourism economy every year. That system costs the Government nothing and is an incentive package that companies offer their lower-paid workers. I am sure that many hon. Members in the Chamber would like to establish a working group with the Minister’s Department to see if we can create a sustainable scheme that would generate such revenues for our seaside towns out of season.

There is one final issue on which I should like the Minister’s support. Many of us who spoke, or who wanted to speak, in the debate on the Daylight Saving Bill on Friday were a little disappointed. The measure would support our weaker pocket economies in coastal areas at almost no cost, and if they adopted it, the Government would increase Thanet tourism revenue by 10%. Nationally, the measure would boost tourism revenues by £3.5 billion and generate about 80,000 jobs —quite an impact for just one measure. The fact that the Government did not even want to investigate what measures could be put in place was particularly unhelpful. Even the Scottish nationalists, who are against the proposal, conceded that perhaps there is a case for putting back the date when we revert to Greenwich mean time. Even an extension to the end of November would make a serious difference. I hope that my hon. Friend, as Minister responsible for tourism, will make further representations to other parts of Government to consider this issue again.

I urge the Minister, who is a great champion of tourism and heritage and who represents a seaside town, to support us in this push for greater marketing out of season, for consideration of social tourism or other mechanisms to ensure that we can get the most out of our exceptional accommodation on the coast and for daylight saving to be regarded as a priority for the regeneration of our coastal communities. That is not just for our benefit. It would benefit the Treasury in increased taxes. The Minister could put a smile on the face of the Department for Work and Pensions by reducing unemployment in some of the most intractable parts of the country, help the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills increase the number of new business start-ups in coastal towns and help us break the cycle of deprivation and economic stagnation that so many of us face locally.

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) on giving a focus to this debate by analysing with great skill many of the problems in seaside towns.

I apologise if I do not sound like my usual cheerful self, Mr Crausby. I have a disease that I am trying to throw off. Were I in the sun-kissed environment of Southport, I am sure that this would not be so. I represent Southport, which some people say is only technically a seaside resort, because we have so much beach that it takes some time to get to the sea. None the less, it has regenerated itself successfully in recent years and I am proud of what has been achieved there.

It might help new hon. Members if I rehearsed some things that were done in the previous Parliament. There has always been a group of Members of Parliament from seaside resorts who have got together to co-ordinate their efforts and put pressure on the Government to deal with their specific concerns. In the previous Parliament, we were helped by a report on coastal towns from the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government. I sat on that Committee and I assure hon. Members that it was not easy to get Committee members to consider that matter, because they thought that it was a marginal issue and perhaps not sufficiently substantive to occupy a serious Committee. But that was done, and it was a surprising success.

Initially, the Government response to that report was fairly negative and bland. Phyllis Starkey, then Chair of the Committee, asked the Department to consider its response again and, to our surprise—there might have been a change of Minister—the second response was a great deal more positive. “Sea Change” funding appeared, which was to be administered by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, and there was a clear cross-departmental focus on the problems of seaside resorts, which was wholly helpful. At about that time, regional development agencies were given responsibility for tourism and asked to look specifically at the regeneration of seaside towns, in addition to other topics that they are more familiar with, such as urban regeneration.

We found from the Committee’s report that it was hard to generalise about seaside towns, because they are all so different; they are not only in different parts of the country, but are different in character and history. Some concentrate on fishing and others on fairgrounds. There really are quite stark differences between many resorts. Skegness is not the same as, or anything like, Brighton, although it happens also to be on the sea.

A cluster of problems can be found in most seaside towns. They normally have an interesting past, but equally they have a rather uncertain future, and sometimes an uncertain view of where they should go. I visited Margate with the Select Committee, not too far away from the constituency of the hon. Member for South Thanet, and found a town torn in two directions. People wanted to go different ways. Some wanted the old fairground back and wanted Margate to become a place of pleasure rides, and others wanted to build on the Turner heritage, and the light of that area, and have a more aesthetic development. I am not sure which direction that area went in, but that difference of opinion crystallises a general view that I have formed, which is that all seaside resorts, if they are to go anywhere, need some view of what they are essentially like.

Southport has been successful because it has not tried to rival Blackpool and has a concept of itself as a classic resort, which is distinctive, and it plays to its strengths, such as Lord street and, generally speaking, the Victorian environment—and as a market brand, it works. But like many other places, it also has problems with its housing stock, particularly the hosts of large houses built for the days when thousands of people trooped there regularly to fill out boarding houses. That means that such places end up with a skewed housing stock. In some towns on the Kent coast, that housing stock is filled with a disproportionate number of benefit claimants. There are genuine housing problems. Sorting out seaside towns’ problems is not just about attending to tourism, but about attending to housing and transport, which is a huge issue for most seaside resorts because they are often difficult to access, having been built and grown up in the days when trains were the way forward.

In making changes and developing the character of these places, we should consider that often seaside towns are blessed with a disproportionate number of retired people. That has a good effect, in so far as it ensures that there is a relative level of prosperity in the town. However, in respect of implementing change, as people get older they possibly do not welcome change in the same way as people do when they are young. In resorts that we Committee members visited, we often found contentious political divisions about the character of development in the town. An additional problem is generated by the fact that a lot of people living and working in seaside towns work in the public sector and will feel the impact of public sector cuts.

Sorting out the problems of seaside towns is not something that should just be thrown at the door of the Minister with responsibility for tourism; it should be thrown at the Government as a whole, because it is a matter of cross-departmental working. The previous Government recognised that.

[Laura Sandys]

I totally agree that the issue of coastal towns is a multi-departmental one; I do not detract from that, but I feel strongly that we in coastal communities have to address each of the issues with each of the Ministers, and then bring that together through the cross-departmental committee. It is crucial that Ministers with responsibility, who can have an impact on our communities, understand that we face many challenges and find out what levers they can pull to assist us. The fact that the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), has responsibility for tourism and is the MP for a seaside town is a great asset for us.

[Dr Pugh]

Absolutely. I do not disagree with that analysis. Tourism genuinely helps in an extraordinary way. Too often in our tourist propaganda, we forget that our coasts are a fantastic asset. We tend to think of London, Edinburgh and bits in between, such as Stratford-upon-Avon. International publicity does not stress a strength that was well illustrated by the BBC programme. We have a fantastic coast, which is a fantastic asset, and we should make more of it. When I was at an embassy in France, I picked up propaganda for the north-west of England, hoping to find references to Southport, or at least Blackpool, but there were none. I found Oswaldtwistle, but I do not even know what it is, and I have lived in the north-west most of my life.

VisitBritain—I have said this before—has something to learn, but we must all learn how to deal with our new environment. If regeneration of seaside resorts is to progress, we will presumably have to work hand in hand with the new local enterprise partnerships, which will be centred predominantly in urban conurbations and will not have a natural feel for the problems of seaside resorts. They will need to be advised, instructed or directed not to leave out places that will, in most LEPs, be on the margins or the coast.

We must also recognise among ourselves—the community of coastal MPs—that whatever prospects we thought there were, before the time of austerity, of new transport links being delivered overnight have probably receded, and that that will not happen any time soon. We must work hard for our salvation. Most seaside resorts, their communities, and councils who understand the state of play recognise that. I believe that there is a role for the Government—this was the theme of the speech of the hon. Member for South Thanet—in sewing the pieces together and ensuring that good practice is spread, and in ensuring that when resorts have a clear vision of their own destiny and are prepared to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, they are given every encouragement to do so.