High Streets

Tom Blenkinsop Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

My constituency has a string of individual settlements with local high streets or estate precinct shopping provision. The high streets in Middlesbrough and East Cleveland face two challenges—one long-standing challenge and another relatively recent one.

The long-standing challenge is out-of-town shopping, which began in my area under the previous Conservative Government, when the Teesside Development Corporation built Teesside shopping park. We acknowledge that that was a good thing for the local area and that it provided lots of employment, but in the short to medium term, there was no plan for high streets in Middlesbrough, East Cleveland and Stockton to deal with the effects of out-of-town shopping, an American phenomenon.

The second challenge is the growth of web-based retailing, with goods delivery to the door. Neither threat can be engineered out of existence. They are a fact of life enshrined in past planning decisions and the advance of new technology. Therefore, if our local high streets in Guisborough, Loftus, Skelton and Brotton are to survive as proper retail outlets, and not just as monolithic parades of hot food takeaways, betting shops and charity outlets, imaginative thinking is required. We need both to be flexible with our built high street environment and to have the support mechanisms to ensure that high streets are allowed to remain competitive.

One concern is the erosion, as a result of cuts to local council funding and changes to the regeneration framework imposed in the name of blind ideology, of the support that local authorities and regeneration agencies could provide. One example of that erosion can be seen in the main shopping area in my constituency, Guisborough, where support from the local authority, Redcar and Cleveland borough council, in the shape of help from borough-wide high street managers, is no more. An ambitious programme underpinned by the then regional development agency, the market towns initiative, has disappeared along with the RDA.

We are also hampered by a lack of support from the finance and insurance industries regarding the conversion of upper floors of older retail premises, where traditionally a 1900s shopkeeper and his family lived. New housing is hampered by soaring insurance premiums, as insurers declare that such occupation provides a security risk to the shop below, even though the new families could provide a form of watchman service if there were attempts at intrusion.

The worst threat comes from the approach of the Department for Communities and Local Government, which sees any form of development and occupancy, however much it would harm the ambience, style, attractiveness and vitality of the high street and the traditional retailers, as necessary to provide fig leaf support for the proposition that the Government’s economic policies are bearing fruit—even if that fruit is a poisoned apple for neighbouring businesses. Successive changes to use class orders and permitted development rights are eroding the powers needed by local authorities and local communities to shape their high streets and town centres to reflect local needs, demands and aspirations. The changes to once unquestioned and accepted planning rules are making it possible for payday lenders, betting shops and fast food takeaways to open without getting the kind of planning permission which, complete with provisions, enabled a balanced stance to change and development in a retail setting.

Imposing a laissez-faire approach that deregulates change of use so that no such permissions are required merely leads to bad neighbour problems for everyone and encourages fly-by-night forms of unsustainable development that cash in on passing social trends, with no thought to encouraging organic change for the better in the host setting. One such example is the spread of pawnbrokers and cheque-cashing outlets as a result of widespread poverty and the need to realise assets simply to get some cash to feed a family. Such changes are often cumulative—one outlet selling cheap booze or hot food takeaways is often followed by a competitor. The same is true of the finance industry, which has followed a pattern of migration from a specific A2 business enclave to a former Al shop front entry high street presence, thus suffocating the chance of niche retailers opening in their stead.

Use class orders have been vital to protecting public health. It is the application of such orders by local councils, including those in my constituency, that has barred hot food takeaways from opening near school gates. Without such controls, that could again become a problem and have a long-term detrimental impact on children’s health. As I know from my constituency postbag, such matters are high on the agenda of concern for my constituents. It is far better to keep some forms of control regarding the use and make-up of our high streets, while at the same time tackling the real problems facing small retailers: constant increases in business rates, lack of any real tangible support from bankers and insurers, and constant rent increases that are often determined by remote financial institutions such as big pension funds, which seek to maximise income at the expense of quality of life.

Labour’s pledge to cut and then freeze business rates will help 1.5 million small businesses, many of which are in retail premises. That will give local shops a real boost, unlike the pursuit of the chimera of a laissez-faire, kick-start approach that exists only within the heads of Government Front Benchers.