Business Improvement Districts: Town Centre Renewal

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

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.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

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.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

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.