Closure of High Street Services: Rural Areas
Peter Prinsley Excerpts(1 day, 17 hours ago)
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Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume) for that. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss.
Stowmarket’s high street is called Ipswich Street. It is the central artery of the town, running through Stowmarket from the historic marketplace. Only a few years ago, it was a busy street, bustling with commercial activity. People came to Stowmarket from nearby villages to go shopping. Many of them went on to visit other attractions, such as the amazing Food Museum—which I recently visited—and the John Peel Centre for Creative Arts. However, stores started to close, one after another, and six shopfronts now lie completely empty. It is a familiar scene up and down the country: high streets disfigured, with vacant shops sticking out like missing teeth. That has a terrible effect on local communities. As the stores close, the town centre becomes trapped in a vicious circle: few people want to go shopping, the high street is full of boarded-up shops, footfall declines and more stores close. We have heard about that in this debate. My colleagues will be familiar with the problem of banks vacating the high streets—indeed, we now have more food banks than actual banks in this country. Other shops follow the banks in shutting their doors. The town centre loses the café and the pub that both performed a vital service as focal points for the community.
The Government must find a way to mitigate the effect of these stores closing. Times change, commercial life and society have changed, but let us preserve the high street.