Future of Town Centres and High Streets

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) for securing this important debate. I work closely with him on the all-party parliamentary group for town centres, and I value his input tremendously. I thank the Backbench Business Committee, too, for granting the debate.

Town centres mean a lot to me, because they should be a reflection of a town’s character. That has emerged powerfully today in many speeches. A town centre should be a place where families go to relax and be together, where people can pass the time of day and enjoy themselves, and where consumers can shop, eat, relax and be entertained. As many of my colleagues have debated, it is about so much more than shopping: that is how town centres should work. In short, town centres should be welcoming environments where we all want to go. That is what they should be, but are they? The answer, with a couple of exceptions that have been made clear, is no.

I said that town centres mean a lot to me, but I should have said, given that many of my hon. Friends have taken the opportunity to discuss their own town centres, that Eastbourne town centre is particularly relevant. A few days before the general election, I talked to some independent traders in the town centre. As we have heard from many other Members, they had been fed up for a long time about the way in which the town centre was going, and how town centres generally were going. They were fed up, too, with politicians promising things and not delivering and so on. I spoke to the chap who chairs the Eastbourne independent traders group, and I said to him, “I give you my word, if I am elected, come what may, I will be down to see you the day after the election.” To this day, I remember a look in eyes of, “Oh yeah, I won’t see you for dust.” Sure enough, after the election, with only two hours’ sleep, I was down there at midday to say hello and to promise him that I was going to roll up my sleeves and get involved.

One of the first things I did in Parliament was to join the all-party parliamentary group. I am now vice-chair, and it is something to which I am strongly committed. I set to work on Eastbourne town centre. Unlike my hon. Friend, I did not have a great deal of expertise in that area. My background is in business development, not town centres, and I discovered the complexity of trying to get something done in town centres. It is really hard: one has to deal with planning, business rates, and byelaws. In Eastbourne, we have an astonishing number of byelaws that make it very hard to set up a street market—the sort of thing that would make a real difference.

Hopefully, the difference this time is the enthusiasm and commitment that I have shown, along with my local council. It was not always the case, but it is now a can-do council. I said that we had to get a good street market in the town centre, which would act as a catalyst or engine to get things going. The council said that there were a lot of byelaws but—and this is different—it said, “We will do something about it, Stephen.” Previous councils, whatever their political persuasion, would just say, “It’s too complicated. We’re not going to do it.”

It took a year and three quarters, but it has been through cabinet. In Eastbourne town centre, opposite the shop where I spoke to that independent trader, there will be a street market in late spring or early summer. It is a start, but as we have heard today, so much of this is about the drive and commitment shown by the Portas review, the coalition Government and the Prime Minister. As an Opposition Member said, this is an old issue that has been around 20 or 30 years but, finally, there is a chance that something will be done. I hope that that is the case because, to be honest, we all know about the state of town centres for the past 20 or 30 years. They have consistently become worse and, with some honourable exceptions, there has not been any real change or improvement.

We are all responsible—politicians, planners and the public—because everything has changed with the internet and the complexities of shopping today. This important debate—I really think that it is important—offers an opportunity so that, in a few years’ time, we will look back at 17 January 2012 as the day on which parliamentarians, the Government, the Minister and the public decided, “That’s it. We’ve had enough of our town centres simply deteriorating and going out of fashion. We’ve got to stop it.” We have to begin that fight. There are many reasons why it is important but, most important of all, town centres, when they work, are the heart of a town. I think that they are worth fighting for, and it has been a pleasure to speak in this debate.