Business Improvement Districts: Town Centre Renewal

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what further powers and fiscal instruments they will make available to business improvement districts to accelerate town-centre renewal and local growth.

My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I draw the House’s attention to my register of interests.

My Lords, it is with some trepidation that I answer a Question from someone with as much experience in the subject as my noble friend. I thank him for the work he has done on BIDs across London, supporting the mayor to deliver 50 of them, and particularly for his work on the Camden and Euston BIDs.

This Government recognise the important role business improvement districts can play in supporting local growth and regenerating our high streets and town centres. In the Pride in Place Strategy, published on 25 September, we committed to raising the standards of BIDs by making them more transparent and accountable, consulting on the ballot process and legislating to expand property owner BIDs outside London. Further details will be published in due course.

I thank my noble friend the Minister for her reply. Does the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill offer an opportunity to strengthen and expand the role of business improvement districts within the devolved economic development frameworks, so that they can play a fuller part in accelerating town centre renewal? Within this, do the Government intend to give property owner BIDs, which my noble friend has already alluded to, a distinct and autonomous status separate from occupier BIDs to support more effective high street regeneration?

BID reform is not included in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. However, the Pride in Place Strategy included a commitment to give property owners a formal role in shaping local priorities by expanding property owner BIDs outside London as soon as parliamentary time allows. Landlords will be able to work with councils, tenants and communities to create thriving high streets and support growth across the country. We are aware of calls for property owner BIDs to operate separately from occupier BIDs and the policy is currently being refined, working with the sector. Further details will be published in due course.

My Lords, the hospitality sector is the backbone of town centres. A 5% cut in VAT for hospitality businesses would give such a boost to our high streets. Does the Minister agree?

We have provided a great deal of support for small businesses, including those on our high streets. The Chancellor announced some steps in relation to business rates in the Budget recently. There are a number of steps in our small business plan to support those small businesses which operate on our high streets, including helping them to address their costs and constraints, creating a licensing regime that supports the growth of hospitality and night-time economies, and enabling them with local collaboration and capacity building, as well as addressing crime and anti-social behaviour on our high streets, which we know is a blight on those small businesses.

My Lords, does the Minister acknowledge how important culture in the round is in this context? Has she seen the report Improving Places, produced by the Mayor of London, the Arts Council and King’s College London, which details, through case studies, everything from supporting artists’ studios to wider community events? This is so important for energising our cities and towns, and being an essential part of their social fabric.

I agree with the noble Earl. I have not seen the report he refers to, but I will take a look at it. I am sure, as we discuss the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, that we will have lots of discussion about how to support communities as they promote arts and culture in their areas. As the noble Earl is aware, in the Bill we are extending the powers for local groups to register assets of community value and giving them a longer time to take the necessary steps to empower them with a community right to buy. We are taking those steps, and we understand the importance of those cultural assets on our high streets and in our towns. As we discuss this in the Bill, I am sure the noble Earl will work with us to develop it further.

My Lords, further to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, about the hospitality sector, is the Minister aware that pubs are a vital part of town centres and urban regeneration? So why did the Chancellor persecute pubs in her Budget, so much so that hundreds are now banning Labour MPs from going into them?

As I have already said, the Chancellor announced a number of steps to support our high street businesses as part of the Budget process, including steps on business rates. We are all focused on making sure that we do all we can to support the hospitality industry, including the licensed trade, and we will continue to do so. I am sure that, as those steps begin to take hold in our communities, we will see the hospitality industry and the licensed trade right in the heart of our town centres, as they always have been.

My noble friend the Minister will recognise that we have to reinvent the high street. We recently had a Built Environment Select Committee report on this, which set out a number of different policies through which this can be done. One of the most successful and easily within reach is to make sure that we have more public services, including diagnostic centres and housing offices. People are now almost inevitably directed to digital centres for those things, yet they are desperately keen to talk to people instead. Having argued with my own local council about bins recently, I know how relieved I was to talk to somebody who actually knew what a bin was. All this can be done easily, and it would revitalise the high street in a way that would benefit community members of all ages.

I absolutely agree with my noble friend. One of the benefits of local councils is that they do know what bins are—we are very familiar with that. I agree with her about the presence of both the public and private sectors in our public spaces. When I took part in the regeneration of my own town centre, we were very keen to make sure that we made best use of the public buildings there to generate footfall, while also encouraging the private sector to do the same for buildings with a huge diversity of uses. We know that there has been a visible decline in high streets, so we need to turn around that trend by fostering vibrant town centres and making sure that there are amenities, services, green spaces, a cultural offer and high-quality infrastructure.

It is nonsense for the Minister to say that the Chancellor has helped the hospitality industry. The industry is up in arms because the Chancellor has increased the costs of employment and of the goods it sells, thereby damaging the sector considerably. To say that, somehow or other, her Budgets have helped is frankly not true.

The Chancellor is committed to making sure that our small businesses are supported. As I said, we have produced our small business plan, which has a huge number of measures to help small businesses. We continue to work with the small business sector to make sure both that we find out what is getting in the way of it developing and that we smooth the path for the improvements it wants to see.

My Lords, has the Minister considered the significance of historic church buildings in city centre revitalisation? In my diocese, for instance, the recent renewal of St Mary Magdalene Church in Newark has not only repaired the grade 1 listed building but significantly developed the town’s cultural and economic vitality. There is uncertainty about the future scheme for VAT relief for listed churches, and the cap introduced last year affected long-planned projects around the country. What assessment have His Majesty’s Government made of the impact of that and of continuing the scheme beyond March next year without the cap?

I greatly value the role played by religious buildings from all denominations in our public spaces, and the right reverend Prelate was right to refer to some of the development that has taken place. The Pride in Place Strategy sets out how we will deliver £5 billion over 10 years to 244 neighbourhoods, which means that our communities can take part in developing their neighbourhoods in a way that is right for them. We will deliver £20 million of funding and support to be spent by local neighbourhood boards, and we are encouraging all members of the community, including community organisations, to get involved with those boards to drive local renewal. We will then have a separate pride in place impact fund, which will deliver a cash injection of £150 million to an additional 95 places, to be spent to improve high streets and community spaces.