I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to enable local authorities to allocate for temporary use by charities, community organisations and small businesses any vacant commercial properties during the period of their vacancy; to provide for certain obligations on landlords of commercial property in connection with such allocations; and for connected purposes.
During the last general election, I kept my election literature very simple, making only three pledges. One of those was to improve the state of our local high streets, known in County Durham as front streets. Everywhere I go in North Durham, this is a matter of great concern for residents. Within living memory, both of the larger towns in the constituency—Stanley and Chester-le-Street—had thriving bustling front streets, with a variety of independent traders selling food, clothing and other items, larger stores, a range of pubs, banks, and entertainment venues, such as cinemas. Sadly, that is no longer the case.
Chester-le-Street has a fine selection of independent retailers and cafés, such as Cafe Neena’s, Computer Centre, Chester Le Geek, GW Horners pub, In the Closet, Carsons Cafe Bar, and REfUSE community café. In recent months, we have seen excellent new additions to the front street, including Willow’s Bakehouse and Pretty Busy Blooms. However, Chester-le-Street’s front street is blighted by vacant landmark sites, including the former Barclays, Santander, HSBC and Halifax banks—which will sadly be joined by Lloyds, closing in January—and large, empty landmark pubs including the Queens Head and Red Lion.
In Stanley, the situation is far worse. The former Board School site reached a stage where it had to be demolished. We have literally the burned-out remnants of Bertie’s Bar, and there are very few remaining active units among the vacant premises. It creates a depressing air of dereliction, which is a source of deep shame and disappointment to residents, who take great pride in the history of their town. It is desperately unfair on the small number of businesses, such as the lovely DH9 café, that are striving to keep the front street alive.
While in both cases there is need for improvement, residents have explained to me that the relatively worse performance of Stanley is largely down to the nature of the landlords. In Chester-le-Street, the main landlord is local to the town, committed deeply to it and takes care to curate his front street holdings by making generous arrangements to help new businesses get started. In Stanley, however, the tale is different. Many of the key landlords are absentees who bought their sites speculatively and have never even visited the town to see what they purchased. When approached by potential tenants, they make wholly unreasonable rent and other demands, as they would rather maintain a high notional value for their property in the hopes of a future sale than accept a lower rent to get the premises occupied. There are a limited number of premises in Chester-le-Street in similar circumstances too.