Future of Town Centres and High Streets

Until recently, Chippenham council was at the forefront of a community-led plan to realise the potential of its town centre. The efforts were led by Chippenham Vision on behalf of Wiltshire council and were hailed by the chief executive of Action for Market Towns as"““beacons of localism in practice.””" Sadly however, I have to report that that progress has stalled following a council planning committee decision to approve the massive expansion of an edge-of-town Sainsbury's, which prompted the resignation of the hugely committed Chippenham Vision chair, John Clark. The town has lost—albeit only temporarily, I hope—an impressive advocate. Such supermarket developments can only be a drain on town centres—in this case not only in Chippenham, but in nearby Corsham too. That is in direct and stark contrast to the Government's stated intentions. Last month I sought and received the backing of the decentralisation Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), for the ““town centres first”” policy. He clearly stated that the Government's commitment to it"““with all the tests that it requires, is firm.””—[Official Report, 5 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 15.]" The evidence from Chippenham suggests that the Minister's words are not being heard. We are not alone in facing the prospect of substantial out-of-town supermarket development. Property consultants CBRE reported last month that over 40 million square feet of new supermarkets are already planned for this year. It appears that ““town centres first”” simply is not happening out in our constituencies. We must address this in the national planning policy framework. There must also be a robust test in respect of qualifying for the presumption in favour of sustainable development; local councils must not adopt a take-it-or-leave-it attitude to planning policies, as Wiltshire recently did. That is what we face in Wiltshire's draft core strategy, which my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), referred to in his speech. It is set to conform to the old unlamented south-west regional spatial strategy. Despite the fact that that never came into legal force, council planners choose to claim that it is necessary for their local plan to conform to it now. Their report to the council's cabinet this week states:"““Until the full provisions of the Localism Act come into effect through secondary legislation, the Pre-submission Draft Wiltshire Core Strategy needs to be in general conformity with the Regional Spatial Strategy for the South West unless new up-to-date evidence indicates otherwise.””" I had thought that this Government had done something about that, because as far back as July 2010, the decentralisation Minister was good enough to confirm to me on the Floor of the House that he had issued guidance to inspectors saying that they should consider unadopted regional spatial strategies as immaterial. The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) is welcome to intervene on me now to give Wiltshire councillors that guidance, ahead of their imminent decision, and confirm that their officers' instructions on this matter are simply wrong. If he does not do that now, I hope that he will manage at least to cover the point in his speech. The future of town centres lies not in rolling them back to the way they were decades ago, or even in maintaining them just the way they are today, but in giving them the freedom to redefine their role according to local strengths and opportunities, and then in ensuring that the public bodies in the local area co-operate with that ambition.