High Street Regeneration and Unlawful Storefronts

Sadik Al-Hassan Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sadik Al-Hassan (North Somerset) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. Before my election, I spent well over a decade working as a pharmacist on the high street. I stood behind my counter and watched the flow of the community come and go through the door. I challenged shoplifters, from which I still literally bear the scars. What I lived, and what I now hear about week after week at my surgeries and visits across North Somerset, is worry—worry that our high streets are becoming a symbol of decline, rather than a source of pride.

In Portishead, residents have watched yet another vape shop or barber shop open where a much-loved local business used to be. People notice, and residents ask why. This matters because the high street is not just bricks, footfall and business rates; it is where people feel proud of where they live and it is where community happens. The opposite is true, too. Vacant storefronts and deserted high streets do not just look sad, they breed antisocial behaviour.

That is the backdrop, on top of which our high streets are now under fresh pressure. Just last month, as temperatures soared, footfall on the high street dropped by 19% on the hottest May day on record, and we saw the same pattern in the most recent heatwave. Shoppers stayed home, commuters worked from home and the high street paid the price. Whether it is empty units or empty pavements, the message is the same: our high streets are fragile and need support.

That is why I welcome the Government’s action: a £30 million enforcement package with raids, closures and cash seizures against the dodgy vape shops, barber shops and mini-marts linked to organised crime, which launder an estimated £1 billion of criminal cash every year. We can have the renaissance on our high streets that my right hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) set out yesterday, but first we need to joust with those criminal businesses. The Government’s action is significant recognition that our high streets are worth fighting for, but I admit that we need even more. We need a co-ordinated vision for what our high streets will look like in 2030 or 2035. We need to manage the future of our high streets, not watch their decline.

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) for securing this important debate. Our high streets are facing huge challenges at the moment. Nationally, fiscal pressures have been put on them—employer national insurance contributions, the minimum wage, the business rates increase—and the Employment Rights Act 2025 is making it even more challenging for many of our high street businesses to take on young people. Then, of course, we have the tourism tax, or holiday tax, coming down the line.

[Sadik Al-Hassan]

I have been a pharmacist and an employer for nearly two decades, and nearly every good business was already doing what is in the Employment Rights Act to recruit staff. Recruiters need to offer those things. It is simple.

[Robbie Moore]

Then why on earth legislate and introduce further regulations that impose much more of a burden on our high street businesses? That is exactly what businesses are telling me, that this legislation is making it more costly to do business.

The tourism tax will tax businesses in Ilkley and Haworth, imposing much more of a burden on them for less money to be spent locally. What does that do? It gives our Mayor of West Yorkshire more power to use my area as a cash cow for money to be spent in other areas across West Yorkshire, rather than investing it in my constituency.

Locally, Bradford council has imposed car parking charges across the whole of my district, including for on-street parking, which is making it much less attractive for people to come and spend money in Ilkley. A petition signed by 4,000 residents was submitted to Bradford council, but the council went ahead regardless. It costs £3,000 to £10,000 to install a parking machine. In the village of Addingham, which has only 18 parking spaces, it will take decades before the council starts making any money.

My simple request to the Minister—and indeed to Bradford council, which I hope is listening—is to remove those parking charges, take away the cost to visitors and residents who want to spend their money locally, and back our businesses. We are fed up with being used as a cash cow for the rest of Bradford to benefit at our expense.