High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill

Lord Mair Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mair (CB)]

My Lords, I warmly support this Bill. As set out by the noble Lord, Lord Whitby, in his introduction, high streets have faced numerous challenges in recent years for a variety of reasons, notably the falling consumer demand for retail shopping, the increase in online shopping and the presence of out-of-town retail parks and shopping centres. In many towns this has led to shop closures, declining footfall and a loss of appeal of the high street.

This House’s Built Environment Committee, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is currently undertaking an inquiry into high streets in towns and small cities. I have been privileged to be a member of that committee, along with the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth. Our committee has received more than 60 submissions of evidence from many organisations and individuals and heard from a large variety of oral witnesses. Views differ on what should be included on high streets to meet the needs of the whole community while, at the same time, supporting a thriving local economy. It is clear that this will very much depend on local circumstances. Each high street or town centre is different. Correspondingly, local authorities will have different views as to what improvement plans would be most appropriate for the designated high street in their area.

The Local Government Association was the only organisation that gave evidence to our committee to specifically refer to this Bill. It also commented ahead of the Bill’s Committee stage in another place. It has raised concerns that the Bill is legislating to give local authorities responsibility for something that they increasingly have limited control over, due to the impact of national policies. The LGA particularly emphasises permitted development rights, introduced in 2013, which allow changes of use between offices and residential uses. These were extended in 2021 to allow change of use between the very wide range of use class E properties and residential units. The LGA argues that these development rights should be revoked because they undermine a council’s place-making and strategic planning ambitions; property owners can change or remove high street uses without needing to seek planning permission from the council. In the context of this Bill, the LGA surely makes a good point.

The Bill will require local authorities to have regard to an improvement plan when exercising planning functions. How, if at all, would this relate to permitted development rights, and will such rights that allow significant changes of use without planning permission potentially impede the effectiveness of a council’s improvement plan required by the Bill? When the improvement plan is reviewed within five years of its publication, as required by the Bill, that review will presumably be by the council itself. When assessing the effectiveness of its own improvement plan, the council will have to take into account any changes of use under permitted development rights during the previous five years. Those changes of use could be very significant and, outside the council’s control, have adversely affected the council’s improvement plan.

Regarding financial implications of the Bill, the Government have allowed £26 million, the bulk of which will be for all local authorities in England to prepare and review up to three improvement plans for their designated high streets. Is this enough funding? Our committee has heard compelling evidence of local authorities being increasingly deprived of funds; they are already finding it difficult to allocate resources for planning and applying for the many government funding schemes, as referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth. Moreover, this £26 million probably covers only the costs of preparing the improvement plans; it almost certainly does not cover any significant costs of the actual improvement. In practice, this means that in preparation of improvement plans local authorities will be restricted to confining their plans to relatively unambitious, low-cost improvements.

I commend to noble Lords the excellent book, recently published by the RIBA, High Street: How Our Town Centres Can Bounce Back from the Retail Crisis. One of its authors, Dr Lucy Montague, from the Manchester School of Architecture, is a special adviser to our Built Environment Committee’s inquiry. She and her colleagues undertook a three-year study of over 100 high streets, which highlighted the importance of broader policies, such as town centre first planning policies. The book is refreshingly optimistic about the future of the high street, arguing that the crisis on the high street is a misleading term. There is indeed a crisis in big retail, and town and city centres dependent on multiple retailers have certainly suffered, but the authors argue that the high streets more reliant on independent retailers and emerging new sectors have a brighter future.

In summary, this is broadly a very positive Bill. By requiring councils to designate a priority area and propose high street improvement plans, the Bill has the potential to pave the way for future government policies specifically to support that designation and those improvement plans. The Bill may be less useful in isolation if other government policies are not introduced or modified in alignment with the Bill. Nevertheless, the Bill’s principal objective is to create thriving high streets, and this is to be warmly applauded.