Future of Town Centres and High Streets

We do need to tilt that balance. That has been the thrust of my speech, and I think that the planning system has an opportunity to do that for us. Melksham, in my constituency, is to benefit from a central community campus hosting a leisure centre, a library and a youth centre. The council's original intention was to locate the campus out of town, but the decision was reversed as a result of vigorous campaigning by the local community, including local councillor Jon Hubbard, and Melksham Without parish council. Local people are not short of good ideas for the future of the communities that they make their home. One tool that people and their councils can use to help their towns is the bottom-up process established by the Sustainable Communities Act 2007, whereby residents, together with their councils, can put proposals to central Government for action to promote or protect thriving local communities. I note that a quarter of the recommendations in Ms Portas's review are ideas that have come forward as proposals under that Act. Unfortunately, it would seem the process has been put on hold, and we are still awaiting the regulations that will get things going. They are required by the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Amendment) Act 2010, and I hope very much that we shall see them soon, so that people and councils will be able to get involved. As we have heard in this debate, pernicious parking charge hikes, along with people ignoring the ““town centre first”” policy, the insistence of councils on conforming to the old regional spatial strategies, and edge-of-town, edge-of-bypass development will guarantee that it is easier to move things out to the perimeter than to regenerate town centre locations. Over the longer term, reinvigorating town centres requires innovative ideas about what their future role should be. The future of our market towns should not lie in being dormitories with hollowed-out cores which send commuters out into large cities but have no life of their own. That is not sustainable socially, economically or environmentally. As we have heard, there is no shortage of ideas as to how we can approach this challenge, and Parliament must ensure that the planning system listens to and reflects the ideas of the communities who will have to live with its decisions.