It’s time for Councils to move onto your high street?

With the news from the trade body Revo that at least 40% of commercial properties on the High Street will need to be ‘repurposed’ over the next few years.

Huge and costly business rates, the national trend to change to online trading from physically looking at products or seeking commercial advice face to face with shopkeepers, deepening poverty, slashing customer opportunities and higher interest rates for those with mortgages are just some of the reasons people are ignoring their local commercial and market centres.

Revo’s report; published by the Guardian newspaper includes pointers towards what some of this repurposing could be, with leisure and civic purposes being prime on their list.

Civic use of high street sites began to disappear at a quite rapid rate from 1974 with the abolition of urban and rural districts into Borough and District Councils with the sale of prime sites becoming part of many new authorities business plans. Further changes to Councils with the abandonment of tiers and the formatting of Unitary all purpose, Mets, Districts and god forbid Unitary County’s began to force Councils into taking low cost backstreet accommodation into their portfolios as affordability became more important than what's best for our community? and how do we engage with people?

With the growth and in some areas amalgamation of Parish Councils into larger units almost resembling pre 1974 rural and urban districts its time Unitary Council’s, the Police and parish & Town Councils moved back onto the high street to bring life onto the streets once more.

In Northumberland, Labour 2013-2017 set out a market towns strategy they welded into the Councils’ then core strategy to move from centralised workplaces into the communities they serve.

The Market Towns strategy was managed by the then Business Chairperson and Deputy Business Chairperson of the Council Scott Dickinson and Liz Simpson who are now the Leader and Deputy Leader of Northumberland Labour Group.

Councillor Simpson told us “ We were well aware, even before this current crisis that gaps were appearing in our high street that would not be filled by commerce and the Labour Group tried to respond early and move into or create new high street space that would house our staff across the high number of Market Towns we have in Northumberland.” “We always thought it would be good for people to be able to make constant contact with the council as close to where they live as practicably possible”.

Councillor Dickinson followed on with “ It's such a shame that the Council withdrew the Core Strategy in 2017 to support centralisation of services and replaced it with a ‘Local Plan’ that reads like a developers charter and the centralised workplace, County Hall in Morpeth has had a six year modernisation, is almost empty and is difficult for people to find. “ Northumberland Labour Party hope we can revive our Market Towns strategy in future in order to help our staff meet the people we represent on a face to face basis and it would be nice if our larger Parish Councils were able to do the same”.

Hope it happens sooner rather than later     Ed.

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