Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to support high streets around the country.

We are committed to ensuring that high streets throughout the country remain at the heart of their community and we have taken significant actions to help high streets adapt and thrive through a range of targeted tax breaks, sensible planning changes and measures to ensure fairer parking for motorists.

At Budget 2016 we announced the biggest ever cut in business rates – worth £6.7 billion across the next five years. The Government is permanently doubling the level of Small Business Rate Relief and increasing the thresholds to benefit a greater number of property occupiers. Eligible properties with a rateable value of £12,000 and below will receive 100% relief. This means that 600,000 small businesses will pay no business rates at all. Furthermore, the revaluation of Business Rates will ensure business rate bills more closely reflect the property market and that all businesses are getting a fair deal.

We have also given over £18 million to town teams since 2010, funding successful initiatives such as “Love Your Local Market” and the “Great British High Street Competition”, which aims to recognise and celebrate some of the great work that is being done by local councils and communities around the country to help celebrate their high streets. The finalists for the 2016 Competition, which received over 900 applications and 500,000 public votes, included Thame, who were runners-up in the Small Market town “Place” category, and Chris Hurdman, who runs Thame weekly market, was a runner-up in the Market Champion “People” award.