Seaside Towns (Regeneration)

Mark Williams 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.

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[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I shall keep my comments brief, Mr Crausby, and, if hon. Members do not mind, turn their attention to Wales for a short moment, in the full understanding that some of what we have been discussing this afternoon is devolved; the issues are common to seaside towns throughout the UK.

There are a few areas on which I should like the Minister, if possible, to comment, and reassure us. In my constituency we have 10 seaside towns, and no two are the same in their complications and economic and environmental circumstances. First, national parks are without a shadow of doubt a great asset, to be protected, and essential for a successful and effective tourism industry. However, there is a feeling, at least in my part of the world, that national park planning departments are a barrier to investment, progress and individuals who want to expand their tourist industry. It would be encouraging to hear from the Minister whether consideration will be given to merging in some way the local authority and national park planning functions, to minimise the chance of complications, which inevitably lead to the rejection of perfectly reasonable and positive planning applications, to the detriment of the local economy.

Secondly, I want to raise a planning-related matter—it has been mentioned before, but I want to put it in the specific context of agriculture: that is ensuring that the people on the fringes, not necessarily in the seaside towns, can diversify their agricultural businesses in a way that benefits the overall tourism attraction of the area. That issue is common to national park planning applications and to local authority applications.

[Mr Mark Williams]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in a Welsh context, the planning experience he alluded to has hampered the development of agri-tourism, food tourism and green tourism, which we in west Wales are uniquely placed to develop fully?

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Gentleman is completely right. His constituency is only a few miles up the coast from mine and I recognise his concerns.

My third and penultimate point is about road and rail infrastructure. Of the 1 million international visitors to Wales, who have brought in £321 million in the recent past, a significant proportion—92%—made their journey to Wales in a car, but once people get as far as about Swansea it is almost impossible to travel any further west with any degree of comfort. It is even more difficult on a train. That is a subject for a future debate, when we will discuss the electrification of rail lines. We are not making things easy for the tourism industry in the west of Wales in that respect.

Finally, for the sake of brevity, let us not lose sight of the fact that although tourism is the subject of this debate, in my part of west Wales at least, coastal town regeneration is just as dependent on other industries as it is on tourism. To take the Milford Haven waterway as an example, in that location, there are two oil refineries and two gas terminals, and the biggest gas-fired power station in Europe is under construction. The inward investment to those enterprises is vital not only for the people who are immediately connected with them. The surrounding tourism industry and economic environment are linked to large-scale industrial investment just as much as they are to tourism. We must not lose sight of that. This is not a case of either/or; it can be both. I hope that in the Government’s proposals, those few points are taken into account.