Future of Town Centres and High Streets

I completely agree that it is important to get small and larger retailers working with the local community and the local authority. I should also like reinforcement of the powers of councils to stop too many takeaway or betting shops setting up in town centres, which is a problem in many areas. I want to compare two towns in my constituency: Runcorn and Widnes. With a chemical industry heritage, Widnes has done particularly well. The town centre has been turned around, and there are a number of large supermarkets; in fact, Asda moved from an out-of-town site to the town centre. There has been good development of land in the area to promote such initiatives, which involve leisure as well as retail. We have a cinema and a bowling alley and an ice rink is coming. Widnes has done well to attract retailers and other investors to the town centre. A key factor in attracting people has been Halton borough council's deliberate free car parking policy. It has also ensured that car parks were built. As other Members have said, it is nonsense to try to rule cars out of town centres; people want to use their cars and we should encourage them to do so, while of course improving public transport links to our town centres and high streets. In Widnes, there has been some impact on local retailers and a number of the older businesses that were there when I was growing up are there no longer, although Geddes bicycle shop still provides the same excellent service for the community. However, other shops have been set up in the town centre to serve niche markets and that is an important factor. On the other side of the river is Runcorn, whose town centre has not done so well, despite Halton borough council's excellent investment in development. One of the problems, and perhaps a lesson for the future, is that when Runcorn new town was set up, some individuals decided that we needed a new town centre a mile or two away from the existing one. It is called Runcorn shopping city, and although it is not a great success it had an impact on the traditional town centre. That has been a major problem, so when new towns grow in future and there are developments with significant numbers of houses we should learn the lessons from what happened in Runcorn. The council has not had the success it wanted, so a year or two ago I took the initiative and set up a working group involving local residents and retailers, the chamber of commerce and the local authority. We explored how we could work together to bring developers to Runcorn town centre to try to regenerate it with more shops and retail. That means, as has already been said, that we need more people living in the town centre. In Runcorn, we are particularly blessed with waterways, such as the Bridgewater, Mersey and Ship canals, so there is an attractive area to be developed in the town centre. There is great desire for that among my constituents, but great frustration that nothing has happened. The town centre is typical in that it has been harmed by other developments that have taken place over the past 10 to 30 years. Supermarkets have not been built in the town centre, but away from it. The town has many attractions, and that is part of the issue. We have to build on a town centre's strengths. We heard that town centres should not all be the same, and should not all look the same, and the way forward is niche shops and a different type of design, building on an area's strengths. In Runcorn's case, the waterways can make it an attractive place to live, shop and eat. Those are the sort of things that we must explore for our town centres in future. Involving the local community is crucial, and if we can develop residency and housing, that will bring people to the town centre, so that it does not become a ghost town at certain times of the day or night. I believe strongly that the Mary Portas report introduces many good ideas. Some powers already exist for councils to use, but we should look at how we can further improve powers to level the playing field and make it easier to develop those areas and bring in extra investment.