Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to support high streets.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to support high streets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend has been a doughty champion for Mansfield. I was very pleased that, in the summer of last year, we were able to provide Mansfield District Council with £1 million of accelerated funding to make immediate improvements to the town. He is right to say that, in some places, our experience is—both through the towns fund and the high streets fund—that local proposals have required further support and guidance to ensure that they meet the perfectly understandable value-for-money requirements put in place by my Department and the Treasury. We are going to help Mansfield to prepare its proposals. We have put in place consultancy arrangements to do that and I look forward to working with him.

[Tom Hunt]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that a significant part of regenerating our high streets needs to be bringing back into use old, historic buildings that have been out of use for far too long? That underlines why the Ipswich town deal bid is such a good bid, because at the heart of it, and the two most popular projects in the consultation, are plans to breathe new life into the Paul’s silo building—£4 million on the waterfront—and the old Post Office building: two iconic buildings for Ipswich that need a breath of new life.

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend and I share a personal interest in historic buildings and the culture and heritage of our towns and cities. Ipswich, as the county town of Suffolk, has a particularly rich heritage. We want to see historic buildings restored and regenerated, and that is a significant part of all the funds that we have made available to date and will be of their successors—the levelling-up fund and the UK shared prosperity fund. I very much look forward to working with him as he finalises his proposals and ensures that Ipswich gets the regeneration funding that it needs.