Out of Town Supermarkets
Debate between Philip Hollobone and John PughWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
This topic is very important in the constituency of Kettering, and I am sure it is very important in Southport. We are about to find out why.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
I thought this debate might be of particular interest to you, Mr Hollobone, and I am delighted to see you in the Chair, as I am sure that quietly, at least, you will make your presence felt. The hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk), a fellow member of the Communities and Local Government Committee, is here as well and he probably has concerns similar to mine. There are other Members who, recognising that this is a half-hour debate, have not deigned to turn up. None the less, they have precisely the same sort of issues in their constituencies as we do in Southport. These are not just Southport issues, but issues that affect people in general.
Town centres are a big political issue for the Government—DCLG Ministers have a lot of programmes afoot to revitalise and re-energise them—and for MPs, because nearly every Member has a substantial town centre in their constituency that they wish to see preserved, and full of life and vitality. Constituents routinely bring up the issue of town centres when they observe empty shops and some of the current dereliction.
Essentially, therefore, we are all on the same page. The Government want a revitalised high street, and we all, whether we are MPs, the Government or constituents, want to see community life pursued via the high street and the range of activities that take place there. That might involve some activities that are problematic, such as betting, but it usually involves shops, retail, businesses, cafés, restaurants and an awful lot of nail bars. It is extraordinary; I am not sure why they have grown up in such abundance, but it is all part of the way and purpose of ordinary British life, if I can put it like that.
We are also keen to see independent retail thrive, because there is a danger, even if retail were at its most vibrant, that every town centre will end up looking similar, with the same shops and offers but without any of the interesting and intriguing breakthrough companies that one can see when visiting a new place. I think we all acknowledge that such desires imply some form of restraint on out of town development—the characteristic sheds and tarmac that exist on the edge of pretty much every substantial town and elsewhere. If that is our ambition, the reality seems to indicate that we are far from achieving it.
My speech relies extensively on the Association of Convenience Stores report, “Retail Planning Decisions under the NPPF”. In that document and others, the association demonstrates that some of the prime retail movers—the supermarkets—are expanding more rapidly than ever in out of town developments, despite the various noises made by the Government and the apparent planning restraints.
If we actually believe that town centres are vital and that out of town development should be restrained, why does planning policy not deliver on those aims? After all, planning policy in that direction is well established. One has to go back to 1996, which, looking around the room, I think was before any of us were actually in Parliament, to find the advent of the “town centre first” policy. If we examine how it is panning out at the moment, we see that its effect is arguably weakening, supermarkets are becoming ever better at getting their own way and out of town retail is proceeding pretty well unabated despite everyone’s efforts.
How is that happening? A case must now always be made for out of town development, but the big retail movers, by which I largely mean the supermarkets, are pretty good at stating their case in a variety of clever ways. One is to minimise the impact of what they are doing. They typically say that their plans will have a limited effect on the town centre or that a new project will have an impact largely on the existing sheds in an out of town development. Such a case often carries weight in front of the planning committees of the land. However, the claims are not borne out by the figures. Monitoring of the post-hoc effects of various developments shows that the effect is greater and more significant on town centres than was initially claimed and that out of town developments experience a lesser effect.
When arguing for out of town development, big retail movers also tend to exaggerate the jobs benefit. A planning application for a project launch will often talk about the huge number of jobs, often in the hundreds, that will be created. However, that number is not a net figure and does not analyse the quality of jobs provided. The number does not state whether the jobs are part-time or casual or whether they will ultimately be replaced by automatic checkouts as systems become ever more mechanised. The manner in which such cases are put forward is extraordinarily effective and plausible, but they should not be taken as credible in the long run if the after-effects are monitored against the projections, which is rare.