Money can’t buy happiness, nor can it (by itself) fix town centres
Just over a month ago, the Government announced the allocation of the first batch of Town Deal funding, with seven English towns set to receive around £180m to help turn themselves around. Further deals and funding are expected to be announced in the coming weeks and the Government has earmarked a total of £3.6bn to this initiative that is seen as a key part of the levelling up agenda.
This is good news and we are very supportive of this sort of scheme. It is clear that many places will require substantial financial support to help them adapt to the social, economic and technological forces that have been pummelling town centres up and down the country. This is particularly so in areas of the country where land values are too low to underpin private sector-led regeneration and development.
And yet the scheme has not been without controversy. A damning report by the Public Accounts Committee found that “the selection process was not impartial” and that the Government was “unclear about what impact [it] is expecting from the Towns Fund or when, and how [it] will measure [the scheme’s] success”.
However, to my mind, the most concerning conclusion of the report is that “despite the impact of Covid-19…[the government] has no plans to do anything other than continue with the Towns Fund”. I completely understand that the government has had its hands full dealing with controlling the pandemic and supporting the economy through the near term (unfairly harming the commercial property industry in the process through its various moratoriums, though that’s another story).
But given that Covid-19 has hugely accelerated pre-existing structural trends, we really need to see a corresponding acceleration of government spending and focus on town centres. Particularly now that there is hope of a return to more normal economic conditions in the next year and we can hopefully start to leave crisis mode behind us.
The £4bn Levelling up Fund announced at last week’s Spending Review is a step in the right direction. But it still involves places going cap in hand to central government and jumping through hoops to access money. It reflects the continued mistrust between Whitehall and Town Halls, despite the latter’s largely commendable and cost-effective response to Covid-19.
While local government finance reform is the stuff one could write whole books on, it’s clear that something is wrong in a world where (I am reliably informed) local authorities even in fairly prosperous areas rely on income from parking fines to pay for adult social care. Significant amounts of senior leadership time within town halls goes on micromanaging budgets and eking out savings to balance the books. This leaves no headspace to be strategic or think about a vision for your town, let along implement it.
There should also be greater support for public-private-community town centre partnerships. Every place is different and needs a different mix of things to thrive, but at the heart of every town centre success story is a broad base of consensus among local stakeholders. Business Improvement Districts and Local Enterprise Partnerships are often a good starting point for achieving this, but often don’t include key groups like property owners or community representatives. We think Town Centre Investment Zones part of the answer – think Enterprise Zones but with a town centre focus and a set of planning, tax and labour market flexibilities to help make change happen, overseen by a genuinely representative governance structure.
Finally, we need to make the most of people’s renewed interest in shopping local and in supporting things happening near them, particularly with town centre rents becoming more affordable to a wider range of businesses. We’ve been having some really positive conversations with Power to Change about their research on how community businesses could play a key role in helping town centres remain thriving, sustainable places and I hope that this will lead to more property owners taking them on as occupiers.
The challenges facing town centres are not new, but Covid-19 has made them a lot more pressing. Much as it might hurt public finances in the short term, if we want to avoid catastrophic decline, some spending will be required .
