Coastal Towns (Government Policy)

Mark Simmonds Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mark Simmonds (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

I am pleased to see you in the Chair this morning, Mr Chope. I am delighted to have secured this debate, which I hope will give the many Members with an interest in the subject an opportunity to highlight the numerous challenges that coastal towns and resorts face and the opportunities in which they want to take part.

It needs to be recognised that work on coastal towns was done during the previous Parliament, particularly by the Coastal Communities Alliance led by Lincolnshire county council, and by the Communities and Local Government Committee, which was chaired by Dr Phyllis Starkey. I am sure that the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden), who has just taken his place, will recall that the previous Government’s initial response to the excellent Select Committee report was hopeless and that they had to come back with another response. Also, the academic research of Professor Steven Fothergill of Sheffield Hallam university, particularly his benchmarking study, has informed much of the debate on coastal towns.

During that period, several hon. Members, some of whom are here this morning, some of whom are not, took a particular interest in the issues that affect coastal towns. There is no doubt that there was a general feeling in many coastal towns, particularly in England and Wales, that the previous Government sidelined them and did not give them their fair share of resources or put them at the forefront of policy thinking and policy making.

I am proud to have in my constituency Skegness, which is one of the country’s most famous seaside resorts. Members may not be surprised to hear that, according to Saga, it is the number one place in the UK to retire to. It is still a popular family tourist destination, with 600,000 visitors each summer and 26,000 caravans on the east Lincolnshire coast. I am pleased to report that, unlike some other historic coastal towns, Skegness is still a thriving success. It achieves that by continuing to attract visitors, from the UK in particular, but also by its private and public sectors working together, with excellent locally led innovation and entrepreneurial flair making a significant contribution.

Skegness is not alone. Most of Britain’s coastal towns have many positive features, including attractive scenery, excellent leisure activities and some significant Victorian and Edwardian buildings, but they are also significant and important economic bases. The population of our coastal towns is approximately 3.1 million, which is more than the total population of Wales. Members may be aware of the recent report produced by Professor Fothergill’s team, which concluded that 210,000 people are employed in tourism alone in coastal towns—more than are employed in the UK in the pharmaceutical or motor industries, or in radio and television combined. Economic activity in coastal towns contributes £3.4 billion to the UK economy. It is clear that such towns are assets, not liabilities, and need to be treated as such.

I am delighted to see Members here from all corners of the UK, but it is important to remember that, despite there being commonalities among coastal towns, each one is different, and each faces its own unique set of challenges. I am sure that other hon. Members will wish to highlight some of those that pertain to their constituencies.

It is important to set out some of the key challenges that are common to most coastal towns. The first is that they have severe pockets of socio-economic deprivation. Twenty-one of the 88 most deprived authorities are in coastal areas. There are high levels of benefit dependency: 15.2% of the working-age population in coastal towns claim benefits, compared with 12.6% across the rest of the UK. The average incapacity claimant rate in seaside towns is well ahead of the English average. There is poor housing stock in many of our coastal towns, with 50% described as “non-decent” compared with approximately 30% elsewhere.

Coastal towns face significant environmental challenges such as rising sea levels, storm surges and eroding coastlines. There are low levels of employment: the average unemployment rate is significantly higher in coastal towns than it is elsewhere. Those complex and interrelated issues need to be addressed in a co-ordinated and comprehensive way.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for securing this debate. My constituency includes Formby and parts of Crosby and Hightown, which are coastal towns. Among other things, the Sefton coastline is characterised by its 20 miles of sand dunes. He mentioned the environment, which is an important issue to my constituency and to that of my neighbour, the hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh), who is also here today. Does the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) agree that it is vital to continue investment in, support for and investigation of adequate sea defences for coastal towns?

[Mark Simmonds]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that critical intervention. He is right to highlight the importance of maintaining coastal and flood defences not just in his constituency but throughout the whole of the UK. I cannot give him the assurance that he is looking for, but I am certain that he and other hon. Members on both sides of the House will lobby vociferously to ensure that coastal defences are maintained. There is a big question about the efficiency and effectiveness of the Environment Agency, which sometimes hinders local schemes and solutions to such problems, and that needs to be looked at carefully.

In the short time since the coalition came to power, it has had a positive impact. Some of the policies that have been put in place and changes that have already been made will have a positive impact on coastal towns. For example, reducing the threshold for national insurance contributions and, as outlined in the Budget, reducing corporation tax, particularly for small companies, will have a particular resonance in many coastal towns, and the promised help for Britain’s tourism industry through reinstating favourable tax rules for furnished holiday lettings will avoid a significant detrimental impact.

Most significant of all are the coalition’s proposals to scrap regional strategies and regional development agencies and to devolve decision making and power to local authority level, thereby allowing decisions to be made at that level—in effect, returning decision making and power to coastal local authorities rather than distant RDAs and other quangos that did not really understand the importance of coastal towns and the complex issues involved. I very much hope that that will not be seen as a role for the public sector only, but that the private, voluntary, charitable and social enterprise sectors, which I believe have a significant role to play, will be stimulated.

One of the key messages that I want to get across this morning to the Minister is that although many coastal towns recognise that they must play their part in sharing the burden of reducing expenditure that will inevitably come from the Government’s difficult decisions, they must not take an unfair share of the burden. We all accept that there will be tough spending settlements for local authorities, Government Departments and Executive agencies, but we need to ensure that they do not have a disproportionate, negative impact on many of our coastal towns.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

When large Departments have to make cuts fairly deeply and relatively quickly, the tendency is to cut out all the smaller centres of service provision and concentrate on the larger centres. That works against rural communities and coastal towns. Does my hon. Friend agree that, although we recognise the severity of the situation and the need for speed, Ministers need to give local people the opportunity to deliver the savings and find a way of doing so that does not denude coastal towns and rural areas of the services on which they depend?

[Mark Simmonds]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful, important point. I understand that the Government direction of policy is to do exactly what he requests, in that decisions should be devolved down to the lowest possible level and those who really understand the needs of each community. One significant fault of the previous Government was that they regarded centralised decision making as the solution to many of these problems and they lacked understanding of the needs of and changes in specific local communities and how to reflect those.

I should like to trot through five specific areas that I think that the coalition needs to focus on if we are to improve the lives of those who live and work in and visit our coastal communities. First, on economic diversification, we need to find ways of putting the economic heart back in our coastal towns. Only a few years ago, coastal towns were not only people’s holiday location of choice, but the gateway to the empire, with goods leaving and coming into the country from many ports; but far too often, that economic dynamism has gone. Too many of our coastal towns are now magnets for the long-term unemployed, those on benefits and people with long-term medical conditions. More must be done to diversify the economic base of our coastal towns.

Understanding the macro-economic constraints, we need to put in place medium to long-term strategies to encourage business to locate and create employment in our coastal towns, creating economic diversification. An obvious example of that would be the establishment of green technology companies, particularly those connected to green energy generation. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) is particularly passionate about that work in his constituency.

The second area is funding formulae, which were the subject of significant debate in the previous Parliament. The independent National Audit Office should be tasked with examining the funding formulae to ensure that coastal towns and regions receive their fair share, albeit that perhaps it will diminish, of resources for public services. The formulae should reflect the visitor numbers to particular areas. I found the starkest example of that problem in Blackpool, where the vast majority of some 18,000 people a year who visit its walk-in health centre do not come from that town, yet Blackpool primary care trust, which is responsible for the centre, currently receives no extra money. There are similar problems in Skegness and elsewhere. There is a double whammy in funding for coastal towns because of the elderly and vulnerable population and the large number of visitors.

Thirdly, there are high levels of benefit dependency in coastal towns—significantly higher than in other areas. The Government are planning some innovative work on benefit culture that will incentivise people to come off benefits and get back into work, and ensure that work pays and that people are not better off on benefits. The Government may like to consider piloting some of these schemes in our coastal towns.

Fourthly, many coastal towns are blighted by poor-quality housing stock and many have high levels of houses in multiple occupation. Local authorities must retain the flexibility to deal with HMOs and prevent their development in localities where they are not wanted or where there is already over-supply.

Fifthly, many coastal towns’ public services are overstretched as a result of their demographics, limited catchment areas and poor transport infrastructure. If I could ask the coalition to focus on one area, it would be improving public health in coastal towns, where there are higher rates of alcohol abuse, smoking and teenage pregnancy. There are 74.8 conceptions per 1,000 girls between 15 and 17 in Blackpool, compared with the national average of 42.6. I accept that that is an historical statistic, but it still makes the point.

I urge the Government to work alongside not just the traditional local authorities with responsibility for health, but the broader charitable and voluntary sector, which has a significant role to play. I am sure that all hon. Members agree that in all coastal towns there are a significant sense of community and people who want to make a difference. There is a direct correlation between poor public health and high rates of people on incapacity benefit further down the line.

I should like the Minister to make a commitment. The previous Government set up a cross-departmental working group to pull Departments together on all the various aspects of that issue. I want to ensure that that working group continues and that it will focus particularly on coastal towns. Although that might sound administrative and bureaucratic, there is no doubt that cross-departmental working can lead to achievements. Perhaps the best example of that is the Office of Life Sciences, which has made a significant contribution to promoting the interests of the British pharmaceutical sector.

Many other hon. Members wish to speak, so I will draw my remarks to a close. There are many significant issues relating to coastal towns that I have not had time to mention, including communities running facilities; raising educational aspiration and achievement; the performance of the Environment Agency and flood defences; the importance of the public realm in attracting people to coastal towns; and support for the elderly, who are attracted to retiring to the coast. Too often under the previous Government coastal towns were ignored and marginalised, despite one or two Labour Members fighting to change that perception. I hope that the coalition will not make the same mistake. Coastal towns have a significant contribution to make. They need to be reinvigorated and focused on by central and local government.