Historic Towns and Cities

Stephen Mosley Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

I want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) on securing this debate, which is of the utmost importance to his constituents and mine. Like Lancaster, York and Colchester, Chester is a beautiful historic city that has been economically successful for almost 2,000 years. As with many historic towns and cities, Chester was traditionally a county and market town, and the modern Chester still has a very important sub-regional role, providing jobs, shops and entertainment for a huge area that stretches across north Wales, Cheshire, the Wirral and north Shropshire.

As a result of their history, culture and pleasant surroundings, historic towns have tended to be very popular and desirable residential locations. However, such popularity and desirability bring about their own problems, in terms of high house prices and the difficulty that many local people face in affording housing in towns such as Chester. In the 21st century, we also face a threat to our traditional economy, which is based on being a retail and tourism centre, from increased competition, internet shopping, out-of-town retail parks and cheap foreign travel.

In Chester, we also have a problem that other historic towns and cities have not had to deal with so much. That problem is that we have not always taken advantage of our historic assets; we have not looked after them and we have not maximised their potential for economic advantage. We look to places such as York and see what has been done there, and we in Chester want to follow in the footsteps of the people of York and ensure that we are as successful as York has been.

There are a few challenges and opportunities that I would like to discuss. First, we must ensure that we all make maximum use and take maximum advantage of the assets that we already have. In Chester, we have a thriving shopping centre and we are already a world-renowned visitor destination. We also have the most successful zoo in the UK, the Roman walls and amphitheatre, and the Chester Rows, a site that is another applicant for UNESCO world heritage status. Furthermore, Chester Races draws tens of thousands of people to our city.

However, we need to do more to ensure that we continue to prosper in the 21st century. In the future, we need to give the people who come to Chester more. When people go shopping in Chester, we need to ensure that they get more than just the shops. We have to ensure that we entertain them and inform them as well. People have to know that if they come shopping in one of our historic towns there will be things happening—street entertainment, museums, galleries, theatre, a wide range of restaurants, interesting historic sites, and parks and open spaces in which they can relax. The same is true with tourism.

In Chester, we have been successful in getting people to come to our city on day trips, but we are aware that day-trippers do not spend huge amounts of money in the city; they tend to come in on the coach, spend a day there, have a look around and disappear again, without putting their hands in their pockets. We have to ensure that we start selling our historic towns and cities as a package. We want to encourage people to come to Chester and not only come for the day but spend a couple of nights. They could see the zoo one day or go to the races, then spend a day in the city centre going shopping or walking the walls and seeing some of our historic sites, such as the cathedral, and perhaps on a third day they could go to north Wales, into Snowdonia, or to Liverpool for the day. People need to know that if they come to Chester or one of our other historic towns or cities, there will be something going on regardless of the day, week or time of year. We need to start marketing our towns and cities as a package—a mix of history, culture, entertainment and shopping. That total mix is important.

Out-of-town shopping centres may have shops and the cinema, but do they have the culture and the history? A day trip to a theme park may be fun, but does it educate someone or allow them to shop in high-quality high street shops? It is only by maximising, and making the best use of, all our assets that we can work towards delivering our goal, which is to have a vibrant and busy local economy and for our historic towns and cities to thrive, compete and prosper in the 21st century.

Like the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood, transport and local transport infrastructure is one of the biggest problems we face. Historic towns tend to have been built before the invention of the motor car, and the Romans did not think of the needs of the car when they were building the city and laying out Chester’s street network. We also have the problem of being unable to adapt our local transport infrastructure due to our historic heritage. No one would seriously suggest blasting a hole in our city walls these days to build a new road or tramway, and, similarly, no one would consider knocking down a row of listed buildings to widen a narrow road.

Historic towns tend to be restricted by their geography. Chester, like many historic towns and cities, is built on the lowest fording point of the River Dee, and consequently faces huge problems getting people from one side of the city to the other, when the river is running through the middle. In Chester, we also have only two bridges crossing the river, so road traffic faces severe difficulties getting from one side of the city into the city and out. That is exacerbated by the fact that, like Lancaster, people have to travel through the city centre to get from one side of Chester to the other. We have to get away from through traffic being funnelled through city centres. Suitable bypasses that allow traffic to avoid the centre are, in many cases, a desperate requirement, and, to that end, like my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood, I would like to highlight the long-standing and desperate need for a Chester western relief road, which would not only relieve congestion within the city centre but open up a large area on the English-Welsh border for economic redevelopment in future.

When people get in to the city centre, they still face problems. Car parks are often worth more as development sites than car parks, which leads either to sky-high car parking charges or to a shortage of parking spaces in the city centre. We all want a reduction in unnecessary car travel, but for many historic towns, especially those with a large travel-to-work or travel-to-shop catchment area, car travel is necessary. Over-expensive parking or a lack of parking has only one effect: it discourages people from visiting the city centre and encourages them to travel to out-of-town locations instead. To combat that, local authorities have to ensure that there is adequate low-cost car parking. New and novel pricing structures need to be introduced as well. For instance, Chester has a free-after-three scheme, which allows and encourages local residents into the town in late afternoons and early evenings—traditionally quiet periods for the city centre shops—while ensuring that all-day parkers, who tend to have to go to the city centre to work, are encouraged out of their cars and into the park-and-ride scheme. It is more cost-effective to use the park-and-ride scheme for the day than use the car parks and fill up space needed for shoppers and visitors. Of course, such schemes also reduce rush-hour congestion.

We cannot forget the importance of the railways. Many historic towns and cities were key link points during the expansion of the railways in the 19th century. Typically, historic towns have very good rail links, which provide some strange ties—for instance, Chester has good rail connections with London, but the direct train to London stops at Milton Keynes. Chester has advertised in Milton Keynes, and we have had a huge number of people coming from Milton Keynes to Chester, because it is just as easy to get to Chester as it is to get to London for the day. We are encouraging people from Milton Keynes to come. I did not think that Milton Keynes was in a suitable catchment area for Chester, but it is, due to those rail links. Virgin Trains said that the Chester-London line has been its best performing line over the past year, so more people have been encouraged into the city, encouraging more improvements in our local economy.

We are lucky that our historic towns and cities provide a desirable environment; people want to live in and visit them. Companies want to be based in them and bring their customers to them. Consequently, we are seeing huge demand, even in these straitened times, for high-quality, modern business locations. However, there is a problem in historic towns in that it can be difficult to find room to accommodate that new business growth. We cannot easily clear large sections of an historic city centre for redevelopment without destroying our historic heritage. The city centre of Chester, like Colchester, is surrounded by walls, so there is a natural limit on growth in the city centre. Consequently, there are huge pressures to develop outside the town in the neighbouring green belt. Historic towns must be allowed to develop organically, and, sometimes, some green belt development may be necessary, but that should be only when there is no alternative. In the meantime, we must maximise redevelopment opportunities and take maximum advantage of opportunities as they arise.

The current economic situation and the proposed downsizing of all levels of government have a silver lining, in that they provide a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for historic towns and cities to release land in town centres for new development opportunities. The abolition of Cheshire county council last year led to the sale of the old county hall in Chester to Chester university for the development of a new riverside campus. The gradual downsizing of Lloyds Banking Group, following its creation through the merger of HBOS and Lloyds TSB last year, has led to a huge tract of land becoming available between Chester station and the canal in Boughton, which, I hope, will be redeveloped as a new business district in the heart of the city. Recent school closures have provided land for new retail development, new care facilities and new affordable housing for local residents. Therefore, there is a sliver lining to the reductions in Government expenditure and the release of properties in our historic cities for economic purposes.

Our historic towns and cities have, by nature, tended to be successful and prosperous towns. By selling our historic towns as a package, improving their transport infrastructure and allowing organic growth, we can help them to become even more successful in future.