Levelling Up Town Centres and Culture in the North East

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By 2030, pride in place, such as people’s satisfaction with their town centre and engagement in local culture and community, will have risen in every area of the UK, with the gap between top performing and other areas closing.

 

Whilst not one of the big-ticket infrastructure pledges such as transport this pledge which really focuses on how we feel about the places we live and use in our everyday lives is probably the most crucial to the Government’s plan in that it is the one most voters will judge “levelling up” by as it is the most visible.

This section focuses on three things, so we’ll take them in turn –

 

Regeneration

This is less about the eye-catching projects and more about looking at some of the drivers of regeneration and how powers can be given to local authorities and MCAs to bring about new investment vehicles. The section also focuses heavily on getting the private sector to invest in regeneration rather than it being simply the domain of the public sector, and by extension the Government.

This is most likely a shift in policy because there is less money available but also because public bodies in recent years have been looking to invest in projects to regenerate an area and to make a financial return and this would make it easier to do. We’ve seen such projects in this area such as Stockton Council’s investment in the Hilton Hotel.

Whilst there are no rabbits out of the hat in terms of announced projects, the Government has committed to a brownfield land fund targeted at Mayoral Combined Authorities (more on the changes to local government and devolution in a forthcoming blog). In this region that means £6m for Tees Valley and £8million for North of Tyne.

 

Town Centres

Town Centres and retail have often been the Cinderella of Government Policy with very little attention paid to them outside Local Authorities. The original free markets left to, well, the free market.

This change in direction is the Government’s recognition that Town Centres are the bellwethers of the mood of a town, prosper and things are good, decline and it is very visible – especially to voters.

Town Centres have been struggling for a while with declines and changes to shopping patterns only accelerated by Covid. We have had a lot of initiatives in recent months in terms of the sometimes-controversial Towns Deals a Future High Streets funds. These looked to deal with longstanding problems such as eyesores and fragmented land ownership.

The document does promise further measures later but doesn’t go into detail but does promise more help in terms of expertise from the High Streets Taskforce.

It does feel like this is the one they have to get right and quickly if the public is to see progress on levelling up.

 

Culture, Heritage and Sport

Possibly the most emotive and, arguably one of the central planks of what it really means to level up. This one is about heart, head, and opportunity.

There are measures to expand youth services and programmes such as the National Citizen Service and the Duke of Edinburgh Scheme. It also promises money for youth centres but, there does not seem to be anything for younger children, no resurrection of Sure Start for example.

We don’t have details of the funding packages, presumably there will be the usual competitive bidding processes, which sort of misses the point but there is at least the acknowledgement of the part youth services play in communities.

Community is another area recognised as a policy area which has slipped in recent years. The measures look to make it easier to bring communities together to own and run assets from community centres to sports teams. There is some money allocated but again it is likely to be on a bidding model.

Culture is a wide area where levelling up is about change of mindset rather than simply throwing money at a something. The paper recognises the opportunity to access culture is something missing in so many areas outside London and the major cities. The document looks at investing in cultural assets in towns regions and flagship projects such as Eden North.

Where the paper seeks to change mindsets is not in the regions but in national institutions. The document seeks to change the rules on Arts Council funding with new allocations heavily weighted to projects outside London and the South East.

It also waves a carrot and a substantial stick (in truth it probably needs to be more substantial) at the National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs), such as The British Museum who receive public funding to do far more in the regions.

 

Rachel Anderson

Assistant Director of Policy

@NEEChamberRache

 

Photo by Charlie Green on Unsplash

Is Covid-19 Killing the High Street?

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New report Cities Outlook 2022 by Centre For Cities outlines the key shopping trends throughout the pandemic, makes recommendations for levelling up, and asks whether Covid-19 means the end of the High Street.

 

Key facts and trends:

  • Online shopping surged at first, but then stalled when shops opened up again
  • Pubs and restaurants were not the hardest hit
  • Fashion was the hardest hit, with a significant shift to buying clothes online. In most cities, fashion sales remain well below pre-pandemic levels
  • The food and drink sector lost an average of 37 weeks of sales in city centres
  • Suburbs have not been hit as hard as city centres. As a result, the suburbs were cushioned from the worst effects of the pandemic. However, most suburbs are not experiencing a boost at the expense of city centres
  • City centres that entered the pandemic in the weakest position have had the smallest hit during the pandemic. Meanwhile, affluent areas were the worst hit because their pre-pandemic strengths became weaknesses such as wider catchment areas shrinking temporarily
  • There was no clear difference in the size of grants awarded to stronger and weaker places, but the lower costs in weaker places meant it will have stretched much further
  • Covid-19 pushed vacancy rates up but did not trigger a large increase in empty shops

 

Concerns about the future of the high street are longstanding. High streets play an important symbolic role, and their vibrancy is often regarded as an indicator of local prosperity. The report explains that the performance of the high streets have not driven the economic strength of the city centres, but reflected it.

 

Regarding the North East, the report revealed that Sunderland had one of the highest high street vacancies in Great Britain in March 2020 with nearing a third of all high street property being empty. However, government support during the pandemic slowed down the long-term trend of high street decline in the area.

The report also noted that Newcastle is responsible for 92% of the North East’s ‘underperformance’ (gap between current and potential productivity). Combined, the underperformance of these big cities cost the national economy at least £47 billion (2.3 per cent of output) a year.

 

The report recommends that policymakers should focus on two things:

  • Helping high street businesses to absorb the shock of the pandemic in the short to medium-term
  • Enhancing long-term economic growth, assisting city centres in adapting to change, particularly by supporting their role as hubs of the high-wage economy.

 

In places with stronger city centres, the report encourages attracting people back as soon as it is safe to do so. This could include leisure events and greater flexibility around part-time season tickets for public transport, which would require the Government to provide revenue support to local transport bodies. For weaker city centres, on the other hand, the authors encourage addressing the underlying fundamental issues behind the lack of demand for high street businesses.

 

The report states that although properties are not expected to remain empty for long, policymakers could help deal with units that have become vacant during the pandemic. The authors recommend allowing alternative temporary uses for these empty properties, with local councils playing a ‘match-making’ role to connect potential business occupiers with landlords.

Other recommendations include investing in skills to create a workforce that can attract high-value jobs and the creation of a £5 billion City Centre Productivity Fund from the existing National Productivity Infrastructure Fund. It is said that local authorities should put forward bids that include a multi-year plan and aim to integrate different measures into a single strategy rather than focusing on several independent interventions. This could include demolishing or converting dated commercial space, creating new offices, or improving public transport.

 

Finally, we come to levelling up recommendations.

Centre for Cities has defined the targets levelling up should achieve as:

  • Reducing the share of people who do not have five good GCSEs (or equivalent) to the national average of 17.8 per cent in every local authority exceeding it.
  • Increasing life expectancy to the national average of 79.3 years in every local authority where the average is below that.
  • Bringing all lagging places up to their productivity potential, with particular focus on raising the contribution of the UK’s largest cities. This goal should have greater weight given the impact of increased productivity on standards of living.

 

To conclude, while Covid-19 has turned the performance of the high streets in Britain’s cities and large towns on its head, the supposed end of the high street is not supported by the data. By September 2021, spending in brick and mortar stores had bounced back in most cities (52 out of 62) – as had offline spending in restaurants, pubs, and cafés. The report’s recommendations will not only help the high street, but look to improve the economy and overall standard of living.

 

Freya Thompson

Knowledge and Research Executive

@NEEChamberFreya

 

Photo by Jordan Nix on Unsplash

Energising the North’s Town Centres

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Emily Thomson, Planner at Lichfields

Summer 2021 saw the announcement of substantial amounts of funding from the Government for various towns across England. For the North East, this means the region is benefiting from approximately £274m of funding, a significant sum which aims to support town centre and high street regeneration. The current North East funding pot is split into three main funds, comprising £172.3m from the Towns Fund, £98.5m from the Future High Streets Fund and around £3m from the High Street Heritage Action Zones. The funding is allocated across various towns, on different scales, throughout the region.

So what is happening in the North East? Most recently, Blyth, located in south east Northumberland, has been awarded £21m from the Towns Fund – bringing the amount granted to Blyth to an impressive total of approximately £32.1m, as the town had already received around £11.1m from the Future High Streets Fund. The funding will contribute to the Energising Blyth programme of major initiatives, with the aim of growing Blyth into an international centre of renewable energy and advance manufacturing growth and innovation. This follows from the granting of the new gigaplant factory for electric car batteries in July, on the former Blyth Power Station site.

Where does this leave Blyth Town Centre? Well, the funding will support the reconfiguration of the Market Place and creation of ‘Creative Culture Space’ which aims to provide animation, landscaping and play facilities, creating flexible spaces for a variety of uses. A dedicated one-way, bus only route will also be introduced through the town to bring people into the heart of Blyth. These schemes will help to ensure that Blyth Town Centre is well placed to benefit from the planned increases in economic activity across the wider area.

What are the next steps and how will Blyth guarantee this funding? Following the grant of funding, there is a 12-month period for business cases to be prepared for each initiative and currently Blyth is in this process with the help of Lichfields. Lichfields has been appointed to a panel to both develop business cases and critically review others to allow for the funding to come forward and the initiatives to progress.

As explained in our recent ‘Moving On Up? Levelling up town centres across Northern England’ Insight, Lichfields has been at the forefront of Government funding activity in the North East. For Redcar and Bishop Auckland, this involved inputs to Towns Fund bids, both of which were successful with funding awards of £25 million and £33.2 million respectively. In addition, Lichfields recently obtained outline planning permission for Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council  working alongside Ryder Architecture for a new urban park and other mixed use buildings in Stockton-on-Tees Town Centre on the site of the former Castlegate Shopping Centre, which will connect Stockton’s High Street to the River Tees.

For Stockton Town Centre, the granting of permission for the new urban park is fantastic news. With a declining retail sector, manifesting itself in a unit vacancy rate almost twice the national average, this park will create an attractive, festival-ready space with the intention of drawing more people in to the centre and generating spin-off benefits for existing shops and services. It will also allow the Council to consolidate the retail offer elsewhere into a more compact core, focused on the Wellington Square Shopping Centre (which the Council also own).

As well as Stockton, Lichfields has also helped secure funding for town centre regeneration in Bishop Auckland, County Durham. This funding seeks to capitalise on the cultural and heritage aspects of the town centre. Here, the funding is focused on making the town centre more attractive to visitors whilst making the most of museums and art galleries created by private individuals and the nearby Kynren outdoor theatrical performance at Auckland Castle. Bishop Auckland will continue to capitalise on its heritage assets and bring forward various projects to build upon its success of regenerating the Town Centre.

It’s clear that funding granted by the Government is to be used for a variety of initiatives in the North East. It’s a ‘watch this space’ moment, with the successful projects from the Government’s Levelling Up Fund to be announced later this year, which is likely to include a number in the North-East and significant potential to regenerate the region’s High Streets. In fact, Local Authorities are gearing up for this funding and Lichfields are already supporting clients to develop Levelling Up Fund submissions. Please get in touch with our Newcastle Office if you have any queries on this and we will be happy to help.

Emily Thomson, Planner, Lichfields

This article originally appeared on the Lichfields website.

Image via the Tees Valley Combined Authority.

Moving on up? Levelling-up town centres across Northern England

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It has, without question, been a challenging year for our town and city centres. As the global pandemic continues and lockdowns come and go, a raft of the nation’s most famous retailers have disappeared from high streets across the country. As in the rest of the developed world, the Covid-19 pandemic has been a ‘game changer’ for the sector. With the growth in online shopping over the last decade or so, most centres had already devised strategies based on re-focusing their offer away from retailing and toward a leisure and food and beverage-based offer.

However, successive lockdowns have acted as a catalyst in speeding up changes in shopping behaviour, and impacted directly on the leisure and hospitality sector to the extent that it is now quite unclear how centres will function as restrictions ease.

In the North of England, our town and city centres have suffered more than most in recent years. While Covid-19 has sped up the process of change, even prior to the pandemic many centres were already experiencing major challenges due to both changes in shopping behaviour and weak underlying economic conditions.

The Government’s Levelling Up Fund Prospectus, published in March 2021, identifies a total of £4.8 billion to be invested over the coming years to support town centre and high street regeneration, local transport projects, and cultural and heritage assets across the country.

In addition to the Levelling Up Fund, as part of the Government’s wider package of interventions, there are three key funding streams, which have already seen a great deal of uptake across the North:

  • Future High Streets Fund – This fund seeks to allocate £830 million to help deliver transformative changes to struggling high streets;
  • Towns Fund – 100 cities, towns and areas have been invited to bid for part of this £3.6 billion fund designed for proposals which drive economic growth. In many places, town centres are integral to these schemes; and
  • High Street Heritage Action Zones – Seeking to transform High Street buildings which can help to fuel economic, social and cultural recovery.

Town centre stakeholders are responding with a range of radical and ambitious projects. These include strategic interventions by local authorities, including through the acquisition of shopping centres and use of Compulsory Purchase Order powers.

With innovative and ambitious strategies now in place in many towns – and Government funding available to support delivery – there are grounds for optimism over the future of our town centres.

Lichfields’ Insight, ‘Moving on up? Levelling up Town Centres across Northern England’, reviews the various different funding bids currently under consideration. Using this research, we have identified six key themes which underpin the different plans and strategies currently under consideration. These are:

  • Health and Wellbeing – With the demise of retail, we need to find a reason to draw visitors into town centres. As well as more pleasant and healthy outdoor spaces and experiences, this could also involve locating other essential services close to transport hubs where they can help to maintain footfall.
  • Education – Universities and colleges have long been key parts of daily life in our city centres. Opportunities exist to locate student populations in the heart of these centres, where they can contribute to vitality and viability.
  • Tourism – Many of the North’s town and cities have fascinating visitor attractions and dramatic physical and geographical environs. An ambitious and coherent tourism strategy should seek to make the most of these unique assets to drive trips to their town centres.
  • Heritage – The North has a rich and varied history, the remnants of which live on in many of our town and city centres. They can make a real contribution to the environment and attractiveness of these towns as visitor destinations.
  • Digital and creative – Whilst retail may never return to its previous levels, flexibility is required to re-purpose the floorspace left behind by these vacancies. Utilising new funding streams and planning reforms, space should be made to accommodate innovative small businesses which will contribute to the vibrancy and culture of town centres.
  • Town centre living – As retail space recedes, we need to ensure our town centres remain attractive places to live. As well as making an invaluable contribution to housing supply in our urban areas, maintaining a meaningful 24-hour population in town centres will in turn drive demand for services and facilities which contribute to the vitality and viability of the centres.

With these themes in mind, our Insight provides evidence across the North of innovation, optimism and ambition in the town centre sector, which means the future may not be as bleak as many sceptics would have you believe.

Robert Dibden, Associate Director, Lichfields

This blog originally appeared on the Lichfields website here.

You can read and download their full insights report here.

Photo by Charlie Green on Unsplash