Future of Town Centres and High Streets

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

As the 21st speaker and one of the motion’s proposers, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) on the quality of his speech and on all his excellent work on the all-party group for town centres. I declare my interest as a member of Kettering borough council.

I know that I have fewer than five minutes to cover the four high streets in the Kettering constituency: Burton Latimer, Rothwell, Desborough and Kettering itself. The three A6 towns of Burton Latimer, Rothwell and Desborough are all small town centres, all different in their ways. Burton Latimer has a supermarket, a mini-supermarket, a variety of small shops and a successful farmers market once a month. Rothwell has a variety of small shops as well as a mini-supermarket and a growing reputation for niche and specialist shops as well as attractive places to eat. Desborough is a former Co-op town where the Co-op supermarket has been around for many years, but the Co-up itself has restrictive covenants on a large number of small shops in the high street, which I would contend has been to the detriment of the town centre. Two supermarket chains are now bidding to build supermarkets in and near to Desborough—Sainsbury’s on an edge-of-town site and Tesco on a town-centre site—and it is fair to say that the town is split on which of those should go ahead. Kettering borough council has the unenviable task of making the decision on that—next week, I believe.

That brings me to the town of Kettering itself. It is the No. 2 retail town in the county of Northamptonshire after Northampton. It is fair to say that Kettering town centre excites a lot of local comment, favourable and otherwise. In fact, Kettering town centre has weathered the recession extremely well. In August 2009, 88% of the town centre’s units were full, which has increased to 90% where the national average is 86%, so Kettering is bucking the trend.

It is also fair to say that there are many myths about Kettering town centre. Local people believe that Kettering borough council sets the rents on all the local shops, when it is really up to the local landlords. There is, of course, a big contrast between Kettering, where there are many local landlords of shop premises, and neighbouring Corby, where there is one landowner in the town centre. It is a lot easier to get things moving in Corby with its one owner than in Kettering with its many. A £5 million Government investment has gone into the new marketplace in Kettering, with new developments in Market street and the Horsemarket. With all this public sector investment, the prospects for the town centre are good.

Now for the bad news. Just down the road, outside Rushden, there is a proposal for a major out-of-town development. According to the local Evening Telegraph, this site, which is 224 acres, will be the location for 20 leading UK retail chains, including a large Marks & Spencer, a cinema, a leisure centre, a garden centre, a hotel and a new lake marina. One of the major investors in Kettering town centre has written to me to say:

“From the plans we have seen and negotiations that we understand they are having with traditional ‘High Street’ retailers, we are convinced that should a scheme of this nature go ahead it would seriously curtail our ability to invest in Kettering town centre and attract new vibrant retailers to the town…we are concerned that a development of this nature would have a seriously detrimental impact on town centres throughout North Northamptonshire”.

In my view, the Rushden Lakes development would be a disaster for Kettering. It is completely against policy 12 of the core spatial strategy for north Northamptonshire, to which all the local councils signed up. I would like to take the opportunity provided by this debate to urge the Government to call in this application once it is registered with East Northamptonshire district council and to turn it down. If the development goes ahead, it will have a seriously detrimental impact on Kettering town centre—as I said, the No. 2 retail centre in the county of Northamptonshire.