High Street Regeneration and Unlawful Storefronts

Patrick Hurley Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. Our local high streets are the beating heart of our towns and our country, but they have faced profound challenges in recent years. We have seen the rise of online retail, changing consumer habits and years of under-investment in our town centres, and the tax system and business rates have not kept pace with that.

In my view, the answer to all that is not simply to recreate the high streets of 30 or 40 years ago. The successful town centre or high street of the future will look different. We need to work to combine retail with culture, hospitality, housing, leisure, health services and other aspects of community activity. In my constituency, we are trying to do just that: restoring our iconic seaside pier, investing in public services, supporting creative and cultural sectors—including the Warehouse Arts Centre, which opened just last week—bringing vacant upper floors above retail units back into use as homes, and improving the aesthetics of the town.

However, as well as good intentions, we need—my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) mentioned the trading standards officer in Dudley—the confidence and determination to enforce our will. Across the country, our constituents are increasingly raising concerns that premises appear to be operating outside the law. Legitimate businesses, which employ local people and contribute positively to their communities, should not have to compete with enterprises involved in illicit tobacco, counterfeit goods, money laundering or other criminal activity. To combat that, we need stronger partnership working between local authorities, trading standards, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the police and every other enforcement agency, and we need to ensure that they all have the resources that they need to act swiftly. Visible enforcement matters because it helps to restore confidence among residents, visitors and responsible businesses alike.

Alongside enforcement, I want to suggest a more ambitious approach to regeneration and renewal, through what I have previously described as renovation zones. Those would be specifically designated areas, typically focused on existing town centres, in which Government could use a package of fiscal incentives, planning flexibilities and public investment to encourage the refurbishment, repurposing and reoccupation of existing buildings, with the aim of increasing population density, economic activity and civic life. Many of our traditional town centres contain beautiful historic buildings with vacant upper floors and underused premises. Renovation zones would provide targeted incentives to encourage the refurbishment and repurposing of those buildings.

Rather than endless outward expansion with out-of-town retail parks, we could be focusing on repairing, restoring and repopulating the places that we already have. If we combine robust enforcement against unlawful storefronts with a bold programme of renewal and reinvestment, our high streets can once again become thriving civic centres at the heart of community life.

[Several hon. Members rose—]