Shrewsbury Town Centre Redevelopment

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Neil O’Brien)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, and to listen to the passionate speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski). I congratulate him on securing this important debate and on his unwavering commitment to advocating for his constituency, which I know about from talking to him at first hand. I strongly agree with him that the levelling-up agenda is for the whole country, not just some parts of it, and on the essential importance of accountability, value for money and better understanding what use taxpayers’ money is put to. I will use the time that remains to talk a bit about how the levelling-up agenda can serve Shrewsbury and the rest of his constituency.

The levelling-up agenda is about empowering local leaders and communities. It is about boosting living standards, particularly where they are lower. It is about spreading opportunity and improving public services, particularly where they are weak. It is also about ensuring that communities right across the UK can take pride in their neighbourhoods and the places they call home; my hon. Friend spoke passionately about some of the glories of Shrewsbury and some of those things that people are rightly proud of. I have been encouraged by what I have read about Shrewsbury and the vision and plan of local leaders, particularly in Shrewsbury’s “Big Town Plan”, which is extremely exciting and includes the ambitious redevelopment of the Riverside shopping centre, which was included in the bid that my hon. Friend spoke about.

As my hon. Friend knows, the Chancellor recently announced the first-round award of £1.75 billion to 105 successful bids from the £4.8 billion levelling-up fund. Bids were assessed completely impartially by officials against four components: value for money, deliverability, strategic fit and characteristics of place. In the interests of transparency, alongside the winning bids my Department published an explanatory note detailing the levelling-up fund assessment and exactly how bids were shortlisted and decisions reached.

Sadly, many more bids were received than funding was available for in the first round. I am sure my hon. Friend knows that it was a competitive process with lots of strong bids. I assure him, however, that that is not the end of the process. Although Shropshire Council’s bid to support Shrewsbury’s regeneration was not successful in this round, I strongly encourage it to bid again in the second round of the £4.8-billion fund, which, to answer his question, is expected in spring next year.

The levelling-up fund is not the only mechanism through which we are supporting levelling up in Shrewsbury and Shropshire, and it is not the only opportunity that will be available. I will touch on some of the things that we have done. As part of our ambition to rebalance the economy, we have invested more than £6 million in Shrewsbury’s transport infrastructure in the last five years. Funding from our local growth fund supported the Shrewsbury integrated transport package to improve road junctions, invest in sustainable transport and improve the town’s commercial centre. I congratulate my hon. Friend on helping his area to secure the important improved train connection that he mentioned.

In 2019, that funding was complemented by a further £2 million from the local growth fund to help to restore the iconic Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings, which is home to the world’s first iron-framed structure and complements all the other wonderful heritage buildings that my hon. Friend spoke about. More recently, I was pleased that £5 million from the getting building fund supported Shropshire Council’s remodelling of the Pride Hill shopping centre, which will create 250 well-paid jobs.

My hon. Friend will agree that that is levelling-up in action and is testament to the Government’s ambition to support Shrewsbury to grow and thrive in the coming years. We recognise that more needs to be done, however, and I know that some of the projects mentioned today have been supported by European funding in the past. Now that we have left the EU, there is scope to go further and faster.

That is one of the reasons why the Chancellor confirmed more than £2.6 billion for the forthcoming UK shared prosperity fund over the spending review period, which is another opportunity to level up Shropshire. That will ramp up to £1.5 billion a year by 2024-25 and the total spending will, at a minimum, match the size of EU funds in each nation of the UK. We will publish further details about the shared prosperity fund in due course, and I encourage my hon. Friend to ensure that Shropshire Council is aware of the opportunities that the fund presents.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am listening intently to my hon. Friend. Before he finishes, I take the opportunity to invite him to Shrewsbury in the Christmas recess so that he can see the town centre.

[Neil O’Brien]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s invitation and I will try to find a time—nothing would give me greater pleasure; it sounds wonderful. I am interested in how the levelling-up agenda can help places such as Shrewsbury.

My hon. Friend rightly focused on regeneration, which is a challenge that all places face at the moment as we move towards more shopping online and as town and city centres have to change to meet the challenges of the new era. He will have noticed the funding that the Chancellor set out in the spending review for brownfield regeneration, through which there may also be opportunities for the local council, including, as he mentioned, by talking to Homes England and to the high streets taskforce. I will endeavour to make the connections offline between central and local government officials that he asked for.

We all agree that, however far Government funding goes and however many different good and targeted spending streams we have, spending by the Government alone can go only so far in fulfilling our levelling-up agenda. We want to encourage strong local leadership to truly deliver and power the productivity growth that is essential for rebalancing our economy and our country. One only has to look at the success of some of our metro Mayors, such as Andy Street, in attracting private sector investment, spurring growth and acting as powerful ambassadors for their regions, to see the tremendous potential of further devolution beyond our largest cities.

That is one reason why, where there is strong local support, we want to roll out those powers and opportunities to the rest of the country too, using county deals. My hon. Friend has expressed a strong interest in how such a deal could support local regeneration and drive growth across Shropshire. I look forward to discussing that further with him as my Department prepares to publish its levelling-up White Paper. It will set out our plan to improve livelihoods and opportunity in all parts of the UK, building on our work so far, including on devolution and urban regeneration.

My hon. Friend mentioned local enterprise partnerships and the great work of Mandy Thorn. I agree with him on that, and I pay tribute to the work of people in local enterprise partnerships. Earlier this year, we initiated a review into the role of local enterprise partnerships. We now intend to consider the future role of LEPs and the local business voice in the White Paper that I just mentioned, alongside our commitment to extend devolution and strong local leadership into county areas, so my hon. Friend will hopefully not have to wait too long for greater clarity on the future role of LEPs. Our levelling-up taskforce is also working closely with relevant Departments across Whitehall to ensure that reform in multiple different policy areas all comes together to empower local leaders and ensure that levelling up will be greater than the sum of its parts.

Once again, I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution to the debate and for securing it. I will reflect on the very important points that he made, and I will continue to engage with him—hopefully, I will take up his offer of a visit—and to work with local partners to support their efforts and pursue this very important agenda. The Government intend to equip areas with the tools, funding and resources they need to become the masters of their destiny. This mission has arguably never been more important than it is today, as we forge a national recovery out of the covid pandemic.

The forthcoming White Paper will set out further details of our approach and how we can support places such as Shrewsbury to realise their ambitions and plans for growth. As my hon. Friend set out so eloquently, Shrewsbury has a rich history as a vibrant and enterprising town. Together, I believe that we can build on his work and that of his local partners, to ensure that Shrewsbury’s future is as bright and prosperous as its illustrious past.

Question put and agreed to.