High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill

Debate between Matt Rodda and Jack Brereton

2nd reading
Friday 26th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his work on this. I am interested in the point that he made about the broader town-centre area. My experience is that many adjoining streets can benefit from this kind of measure and, indeed, neighbouring shopping centres. I urge him to look at that and be as flexible as possible, as there is a risk of displacement activity and concentrating on a small area. I hope that he has thought about that.

[Jack Brereton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that important point. I agree entirely that the side streets that make up the high street are just as important, and we do not want to see displacement. We want the whole area to be lifted and improved so that it attracts new uses to fill those empty spaces.

Local government should make the designation according to local circumstances, as long as an area is important to the local economy because of a concentration of high street uses. It is further specified that it should not include streets where the importance is considered to be derived principally from goods or services purchased in the course of business. High street consumer retail, including hospitality, is part of what makes the totemic importance of our streets. Defining high streets to the letter is impossible, and we must recognise their evolving nature and the need to attract alternative uses, which may not be primarily retail.

The Bill is not prescriptive by design. For example, one option would be to legislate for the definition of high streets based on the definition used by the Office for National Statistics in its pioneering and experimental work with the Ordnance Survey to map the location and characteristics of high streets in Great Britain. According to that working definition, a high street consists of

“15 or more retail addresses within 150 metres.”

That dataset aims to bound retail clusters using street names, while aiming deliberately to exclude retail functions such as retail parks, industrial estates and isolated shopping centres. By that definition, there are 6,969 high streets in Great Britain, of which 6,136 are in England. In London alone, the Office for National Statistics and Ordnance Survey map shows 1,204 high streets. More importantly, the west midlands has 604, including the sweep of Market Street, Times Square, The Strand, which includes my constituency office, and the pedestrianised Exchange shopping centre in Longton. Interestingly, it also manages to capture that part of City Road in Fenton, also in my constituency, that is primarily retail in character, while excluding the part that is not.

I am drawing attention to the ONS data work and the demo map on the Ordnance Survey website, because it may prove to be a useful starting point for local authorities. It also, of course, helps me to make the point that local authorities do not have to work from scratch on this. There is no intention to place an onerous burden on local authorities; the intent is to get local authorities to become familiar with the data and more proactive about the best practice for the improvement of local high streets, in collaboration with all those who have an interest in making our high streets the best places to be.

I rejected specifying the ONS and Ordnance Survey definition in the Bill, partly because it encompasses so many streets within its definition, and to designate and draw up improvement plans for them all would be onerous. That task could be managed, however, with the stipulation that only up to three high streets per authority can be chosen. That said, I note that local authorities across England have designated nearly 10,000 conservation areas, so there may be room for greater possibility in the designations.

More fundamentally, the ONS and OS definition does not quite encompass what I would think of as a high street in parts of the country, including in my home city. But I stress that it is a great starting point for designating purposes and for the consultees on designations and improvement plans. As the ONS said in the 6 June 2019 article, “High streets in Great Britain”:

“The closure of branches of retailers across many high streets has led to worries about the decline of retail on the high street, and in turn anxiety about how high streets will develop in the future.”

In this context, it is important that good data on high streets are available to monitor the changes and inform policy responses. The article goes on to say:

“It should be noted that this high streets project is very much a work in progress.”

That is reiterated in the 10 August 2020 update, which says:

“We continue to develop our work which means that the data and results in this article are Experimental Statistics.”

At this experimental stage, it seems the right time to start a wider conversation with local government and local communities on which streets should be designated formally as high streets for the purpose of closer study, review and improvement plans. The requirement that at least one street be identified by each local authority ensures that every local authority will engage in this process, and the stipulation that only up to three can be designated at one time is designed to ensure that the task is not too onerous and is meaningful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Brereton]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point, but I would say that it varies from place to place. Across the country we have various types of high street, in towns small and large, so it varies depending on the nature of the area and whether it is urban or more rural. It would depend on that right across the country.

As I say, there will no doubt be considerable pressure to designate a large number of high streets from the beginning of this Bill becoming an Act, but I fear that it would prove overwhelming and we should safeguard against this. I say that with a certain trepidation, because there are six historic market towns in the modern city of Stoke-on-Trent. The idea of designating more than three high streets is tempting, because each town has a high street that could, and indeed should, be designated at some point in a rolling process of improvements across the city. I accept that this may prove something to revisit at later stages of the Bill.

The eagle-eyed in the House will have noticed that, for the purposes of the Bill, high street uses mirror those already legislated for in part 10 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. This encompasses a good range of what would ordinarily be seen as high street uses by the general public and does not specify an exact number of retail addresses within a certain distance, as attempted in the ONS’s experimental definition.

Members will be interested to know that the ONS discovered what it calls

“one notable geographic feature in England”

in what was otherwise a distribution of retail addresses on high streets across the whole of Great Britain that showed no clear pattern across the country. The English feature—this is germane to an English Bill—is that there are hub towns with a higher proportion of retail addresses on their high streets. Hub towns are those that are identified in the official rural-urban classification for England as being important hubs for the rural areas around them because they provide services, employment and businesses. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs includes towns like Stone and Cheadle, in north Staffordshire, in this category. There will be a need for improvement plans to be consulted on beyond the immediate town and rural areas that depend on high streets’ success in these hubs.

There is a great deal of data, and it is time for local authorities to use this to best effect and focus attention on preserving, enhancing and reviving our high streets. They should do this in concert with the communities they serve—both businesses and residential.

[Matt Rodda]

I wonder if the hon. Gentleman has considered the public transport implications of what he is saying, because he is making a very good point about hub towns and rural areas, and their connectivity to bigger towns or cities. In my county, one of the very important benefits we have is the existence of excellent bus services—Reading buses connect to neighbouring smaller towns—and I understand that there might be an issue in Staffordshire with the different level of bus provision. I wonder whether he would like to comment on the importance of public transport and its ability to help regenerate towns and cities.