Future of Town Centres and High Streets

David Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

I should declare an interest. I own commercial properties in Greater Manchester and I was a shopkeeper for 20 years. I had clothes shops and hairdressing outlets around the Greater Manchester area. For years I have been watching the decline of town centres, and I agree with more or less everything that I have heard from both sides of the House today about the state of our high streets and town centres.

Our shopping habits have changed, and we must recognise that. The internet has been a revolutionary step forward and, as we can all agree, it has good points and bad points. There is more choice on the internet, but the disadvantage is that people cannot hold, touch, see or experience the object unless it is in a showroom. Many town centre shop owners have said that they have become showrooms for the internet market. I know that many suppliers and manufacturers have taken measures to stop certain sales taking place over the internet, but the internet has had a large impact on town centres, as out-of-town shopping has on all our towns across the country.

The good points are that those huge shopping centres provide security, diversity and more choice—but most of all, they offer free parking. They are accessible from the motorways. More often than not they are on bypasses that have been created because every town centre in the land has been pedestrianised. Correct me if I am wrong, but most town centres in this country have been developed through the centuries, most of them in Victorian times, as thoroughfares or crossroads where traders met and markets, and later towns, developed. For the life of me I cannot understand why every major town centre in the UK has been pedestrianised. Cars have stopped going in. The whole infrastructure of a town centre was based on traffic going through, in and out. To compound things further, what did we get in some, if not most, councils? Parking wardens. Private parking wardens—a way of raising money.

Let me tell it like it is. Where I am from, I still have commercial properties. If I nip into the local town or go to visit my children, I park, and I then have 30 minutes. By the time I have walked into the town centre, which has now shrunk, it is time for me to go back. When I get back, more often than not I have a parking ticket. That discourages people from going into town centres.

Look at what has become of our town centres. As one hon. Member said, they have become the home of charity shops, fast-food outlets and betting shops. A plethora of shops service retail industries. The large high street clothing shops—the Nexts and the Marks & Spencers—will not set up in a small town any more because the units are too small. We now have to look at the planning system. Over the past few years many town planners, rightly or wrongly, have been planning on the outskirts of the town. A bypass road has been built round the pedestrianised town and the situation has been self-perpetuating.

We must start thinking about the future of town centres. The circumference of the town centre will shrink, and the outer shops will more than likely become housing. The town planners should recognise that if we are to attract larger businesses into the town centres again, we must redevelop and create units that will house their current requirements, instead of what happened when town centres were built up, in some cases hundreds of years ago and in other cases as recently as 50 years back.

To sum up, we should re-open some of the pedestrianised towns where applicable, and we should start looking seriously at how to attract businesses back into the centre of towns. More than anything, we should try to work out a better system of parking. Free parking areas would be preferable, but in this day and age I know that that would be almost impossible. Thank you so much, Mr Deputy Speaker, for letting me speak in this debate.