Town Deals: Covid-19 Recovery

Peter Aldous Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Rosindell, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore) on securing the debate. I enjoyed his speech, but there was one notable omission. He did not mention Southport’s most famous son, Red Rum, who lived in a stable behind a garage. He cured his ills on the beach and won three grand nationals from there. Hopefully, that will be remembered in Southport’s towns deal.

Lowestoft has its own towns deal, which will play a key role in the post-covid recovery and in transforming the town, making it a compelling place to live in, work in and visit. The town investment plan was produced with the Lowestoft place board, on which I sit, under the chairmanship of Stephen Javes, and special thanks must go to the officer team at East Suffolk Council, who are now hard at work in turning an exciting vision into a compelling reality. In many ways, covid has accelerated processes of change in our towns that were under way in any case, but it has hit Lowestoft particularly hard, and the immediate challenge that we face is to get people back into the town, where there are so many independent businesses offering bespoke and special products and experiences. That is the objective of the Bouncing Back campaign, which is being promoted by the Lowestoft Journal and East Suffolk Council.

There is also a need for private landlords to play their role in coming forward with realistic rents and lease expectations that properly take into account current market conditions. We need to step off the unseemly not-so-merry-go-round whereby tenants, full of expectation, sign leases with the benefit of a rent-free period. When that ends, they find their businesses unable to sustain an unrealistically high rent. They leave, then someone else comes in, and the whole saga is repeated. We need to stop this. I appreciate that it is not necessarily a matter for the Minister, but it is a matter for my previous profession as a chartered surveyor. From my experience over the years—I have not been in practice for more than 11 years—the commercial property sector has been much slower than, say, the agricultural sector to accept market realities and to adjust rents downwards when they need to go down, and in line with what tenants can afford to pay. Perhaps commercial landlords are clinging to the notion of the upward-only rent review clause, which is now very much a thing of the past. They and their lenders should fully accept—I acknowledge that some of them do—that this is in the past and work in the new reality.

The Lowestoft towns deal is based on the town’s rich history and heritage, and it seeks to take full advantage of the new opportunities emerging in the marine environment, in renewable energy and sustainable fishing, and in showcasing the south beach and the close proximity to both the Suffolk Broads and the Norfolk Broads. The initial public sector funding of £24.9 million will unlock a minimum of £354 million of private sector investment. A wide variety of projects are proposed, including the station quarter, the historic quarter, the cultural quarter and the marine science campus. They may well require some additional pump-priming from sources such the levelling-up fund and the community renewal fund. My concern is that, at present, Lowestoft is unfairly disadvantaged in submitting bids to those funds. Despite high levels of deprivation, the town is neither in category 1 for the levelling-up fund nor is it designated a priority place for the community renewal fund.

Lowestoft is remarkably similar in many ways to Great Yarmouth, 10 miles up the coast, with the same challenges and opportunities. Yet Yarmouth is in category 1 and is a priority place. I do not begrudge Great Yarmouth that; it is right that it should have those designations, but so should Lowestoft. Nelson ward in Yarmouth is the 39th most deprived nationally, but Kirkley in Lowestoft is the 25th. In Yarmouth 20% of children live in low-income families but 25.5% do in Lowestoft. In Yarmouth, 22.5% of the population have been diagnosed with a long-term, life-limiting illness or disability; in Lowestoft, that figure is 28%.

The explanation given for that disparity and unfairness is that Lowestoft is now part of a large district council area, the recently formed East Suffolk Council, where there are far better-off places, such as Aldeburgh and Southwold, which conceal this hidden deprivation, though it is not so hidden from my perspective. However, I am not sure that argument holds water. King’s Lynn in west Norfolk—again, somewhere I have no grievance against, primarily because I used to spend summer holidays there with my late grandmother—is a priority place and in category 1. I do not have a problem with that. I do not deny that there are deprivation challenges in King’s Lynn, but is that really the case in places such as Brancaster and Burnham Market, which has been dubbed “Chelsea-on-sea”?

I am not holding out a begging bowl. What I am looking for is fairness and a level playing field. At present, we do not have that for Lowestoft. The Government have been helpful in enabling us to secure the funding for the Gull Wing bridge and the Lowestoft flood defence scheme, two vital infrastructure projects that are now under construction. Moving forward, we must be given the same opportunity as other similar places, in being able to submit bids to the levelling-up fund, the community renewal fund and the forthcoming UK shared prosperity fund, from the same place on the starting grid as towns and places with similar challenges.

I have written to the Minister highlighting these concerns. I have spoken to him and he has listened patiently. I urge him and his colleagues to look again and to right this wrong.