Local High Streets

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, let me make a couple of general points that might help hon. Members. First, it is helpful if those who intend to speak in Westminster Hall write to Mr Speaker. A number of you have done so, but others have not.

Secondly, I mean no disrespect to my old colleague, the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), for whom I was a special adviser, but normally the order of dress in this Chamber is the same as in the main Chamber. It being Christmas, however, a degree of latitude is probably perfectly in order.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

It being Christmas, you might be more generous, Mr Gray.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

It is a very Christmassy outfit, if I may say so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

A debate of this kind inevitably has something of a Cook’s tour quality, so I want to take hon. Members from Harrow down either the A40 or the M40, or the Chiltern railway line, to Bicester and Banbury. The two main towns in my constituency are market towns, and their only real raison d’être has been as market towns.

Retail continues to change every decade. The Banbury in photographs taken in the 1930s looks very different from the Banbury of the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s or ’70s. There is continuous evolution because retail is all about millions of people making decisions—thousands of decisions each day—about how they spend their money, and that evolution will continue.

In recent years, two substantive changes have affected town centres and high streets. One is shopping near the edge of town, or out of town. Banbury has excellent supermarkets: Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons. However, they are on the outskirts—on the edge of the town. People want to use them and they are much used. We must accept that part of the retail revolution as a given.

The other revolutionary change is the use of the internet. I understand that 10% of Christmas presents will be bought on the internet this year. I recently visited the Christmas sorting office of Banbury post office, as I have done practically every year for the past 30. I suspect that every other right hon. and hon. Member has also visited their sorting office. In previous years, I saw thousands and thousands of Christmas cards. Last year I started to notice some parcels, but this year the place is awash with parcels from Amazon and elsewhere. I shall take this opportunity to pay a compliment to all the postmen and women who have been getting out in grim conditions. In the villages of north Oxfordshire yesterday, the one constant sight was the Post Office van, which was getting through to deliver the huge number of parcels bought on the internet.

Nowadays the internet makes Christmas shopping easy. Both my children’s Christmas presents were bought on the internet. The situation with my wife is much simpler; she just tells me what she has bought for me to give her. I am not sure whether she bought it on the internet, but it is a very simple system. However, the internet revolution will not go away. People will buy more and more on the internet.

At any one moment about 12% of the retail properties in Banbury are voids. They change—some come and some go—but over the past three or four years, walking down the high street in Banbury or in the market square, one has seen those voids. I do not see where the speciality shops will come from to fill those voids. We have had—and do have—regeneration in Banbury. We have the fantastic Castle Quay shopping centre. We have just had a scheme, involving the Environment Agency, through which a private sector contribution is enabling Banbury to continue with some flood defences that will make town centre regeneration possible along the Oxford canal. Some really grotty existing light industrial areas will be redeveloped for affordable housing and new businesses. The area will be really exciting, but we will still be left with much empty retail space.

The question I want to put to my hon. Friend the Minister is about a conundrum with which we shall all have to get to grips. Much of the void retail property belongs to commercial developers. It is on their balance sheets as an asset. They do not particularly mind about the situation. They are not getting rent from the property, but they are happy to leave such capital assets where they are. It seems that there is no incentive for them to bring it back into useful existence. I have come to a conclusion about what we shall need to do in a town such as Banbury with much of that former retail space. That space is not being used, and the space above it, where shopkeepers would once have lived but which later became commercial space, is pretty grotty commercial space that is difficult to let, as much better commercial office space is being built on business parks around the town. Realistically, it will be difficult to let that space. I think that we need to bring it back into housing use as flats above shops to house young people, students, and key workers such as nurses.

To some extent that is already happening in Banbury, but I suspect that we shall need it to happen a lot more. What can we do to accelerate the process? What can be done to encourage commercial landlords to see that they will get better yields by seeking planning permission to convert some of the empty retail space into accommodation than they will by leaving it as retail voids? I am thinking of setting up a prize for the grottiest, longest-term void, and at present the award would undoubtedly go to a site that was the headquarters of Crest Hotels in Banbury, which is an abomination unto the Lord. That complete mess, which is within a cricket ball’s throw of the town hall, is now just used by roosting pigeons. There seems to be very little incentive for the owners or freeholders of the property to bring it back into use and turn it into offices or housing.

We need to provide some incentives—either carrots or sticks—to owners of empty retail space to get them to consider what uses they can put the buildings to, other than leaving them as retail voids. Of course, that means that the local planning authority must be supportive and encouraging about people returning to live in town centres and high streets. However, given the unmitigated pressure on new housing—particularly for young people, students, single people and key workers—I should have thought that that approach would produce an ideal relationship involving trying to find existing buildings to convert to flats and housing for such people.

The uncomfortable truth is that aspects of the retail revolution are such that we are never going to see our town centres or high streets revert to what they were in the 1950s or 1940s. The retail revolution has moved on. We must find other ways to secure the vitality and viability of town centres with the shops, retail experiences, banks and building societies that already exist. We must do all that we can, of course, to ensure that people want to come to the town centre and use it as a focus for the community. However, we must also accept that we shall never need all our town centres’ historical retail space for retail purposes. Some of it could better be converted to housing. However, the mechanisms for bringing that about—how to get the housing and how to get more people living in town centres—are a conundrum, and I should welcome the Minister’s thoughts.