UK Parliament / Open data

The High Street

Proceeding contribution from Simon Danczuk (Labour) in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 21 May 2013. It occurred during Adjournment debate on The High Street.

My response to the hon. Gentleman’s point is that the high street is too important to communities simply to be left to the free market. There is a requirement for intervention both nationally and locally.

It has been widely reported that many of the first and second-wave Portas pilots have spent hardly any money and some have spent nothing at all. Did Ministers not award the pilots to towns that already had ready-to-go plans to transform their high streets? At a time when urgent action was needed, everyone anticipated that the pilots would hit the ground running. Instead, most of them have withdrawn into a shell and are in a state of paralysis. It now looks as though some of the plans had been drawn up on the back of an envelope and were nowhere near viable. Can the Minister explain how long those pilots are supposed to last? Will they carry on struggling to put plans together indefinitely?

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
563 c85WH 
Session
2013-14
Chamber / Committee
Westminster Hall
Back to top