Holding onto hope on the high street

This week, Renewal are publishing a series of reflections on the direction that Andy Burnham's new government could or should take. In this piece, Power to Change's Jessica Craig argues for revitalising high streets by reinstating them as centres of civic life.

Andy Burnham’s by-election campaign telegraphed hope not just to constituents in Makerfield, but to the country as a whole. His Manchester speech, setting out his vision just a week after his return to Parliament, concluded with a refrain asking the nation to imagine ‘good growth in every postcode and hope in every heart’.

While hope has been a key facet of Burnham’s return to Westminster and his journey to leadership, keeping it alive as he turns his attention to governing will not be easy. Burnham prepares for office after a turbulent two years for the Labour government, and in a time of stubborn economic pressures, strained public services and declining public trust in the parties of the political mainstream. Central to his political vision is demonstrating that politics can once again improve people’s daily lives. If Andy Burnham wants to keep the good vibes going, he will need to forge a policy agenda that converts that sense of hope into something tangible and endures when the tough times set in. The answer can be found on our doorsteps.

The decline of our nation’s towns and high streets is a highly salient challenge for an incoming Prime Minister. The state of the high street is a barometer of local prosperity or – more often – decline. Run down, boarded up high streets undermine civic pride. Anti-social behaviour and illicit trade dent people’s sense of security in their own neighbourhoods. A lack of things to do and a crumbling public realm deprive us of places to gather. This stagnates our local economies and fragments our society, in turn leaving us less able to respond to these challenges.

The state of the high street came up on the doorsteps of Makerfield, and it continues to be a source of concern for people around the country. Notably, it’s driving distrust in mainstream politics. Power to Change’s research points to a link between persistent high street vacancy and rising support for Reform UK. This supports the findings of previous research linking visible local decline with rising support for right-populist parties. Where people see their towns and high streets looking abandoned, they rightfully feel that politics is not working for them.

Burnham has made clear his plan for the country is a decade-long endeavour. But with the reality of a general election in just a few years, his policy programme will need to offer something that shows the British public that his government has not forgotten them. Improving the material condition of the British high street, reinventing what it’s for and who owns it, can ensure hope isn’t just something we feel, but something we see too.

Burnham has already set a high level of ambition, arguing that we should ‘make our high streets the new symbol of Britain’s renaissance’. But with so many failing before him, how can he shape a progressive policy agenda that actually works? The answer is in reinstating high streets as centres of our shared civic life. We already see glimpses of what is possible in communities across the country.

A civic model for the high street, which combines retail and hospitality-led businesses with more spaces for care, education, culture, connection, heritage and high-quality housing should replace the last vestiges of retail-led thinking. This can revive high streets by restoring footfall, visibly renewing buildings and the public realm, and shaping a more purposeful high street offer that meets local needs.

This approach aligns with Burnham’s commitment to devolution, by giving communities the tools to make the changes that matter most to them. High streets anchor civic pride and local identity, and civic regeneration embraces what makes our places unique without letting nostalgia for a bygone era overwhelm.

It can also offer a timely response to the crisis of trust in our politics, which reached historically low levels around the time of the general election. Initiatives like the Pride in Place programme have sought to treat the disempowerment that many feel by putting power and investment as close as possible to neighbourhoods. This policy prescription is right, but the scope of what has been delivered to date does not yet match the boldness of the programme’s ambition. The work of renewing the most disadvantaged places is slow and gradual, while the time to demonstrate change is short. The payoff from improving our high streets is progress we can see and feel in our communities.

Restoring the civic function of our high streets can counter the mounting challenges of social isolation, fragmentation and declining social cohesion by creating connecting places. It can also address interconnected challenges of poor health, insecure work, low living standards and limited access to opportunity. As familiar and accessible locations, high streets are ideal for delivering health and care services, employment support, education and local government services with a focus on prevention. This is close to the approach Andy Burnham has led in Greater Manchester through Live Well – a community-led model for public services focused on prevention, connected support, and creating the holistic conditions for people to thrive – to tackle social, economic and health inequalities. But innovations are emerging elsewhere. When Barnsley Council and Barnsley Hospital moved their community diagnostic services to a town centre shopping centre, non-attendance at appointments fell by nearly a quarter.

By encouraging more diverse business types, civic high streets can create opportunities for good work beyond the precarity of high street retail and hospitality jobs. On Argyle Street in Birkenhead’s town centre, Make CIC provides creative workspace and works with its community of makers on creative commissions for clients around Merseyside. Next door, the community-owned music venue Future Yard offers young people their first experience of careers in the live entertainment industry.

But for the civic model to thrive, government will need to tackle the high cost of doing business on the high street. To nurture those businesses that create social benefit and economic renewal, we’ll need targeted fiscal incentives that reward civic leadership.

Government has recently changed business rate multipliers so that warehouses for online retailers take on more of the tax burden. While the lower multipliers provide minor relief for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses, these changes have done little to facilitate new types of businesses on the high street or address otherwise high operating and regeneration costs. As Noah Law MP argued in Renewal in May, high streets could be designated as Special Economic Zones where taxes raised fund local investment. Or they could be given Mayoral Development Corporation-style powers to reduce rates and support business growth, or tackle other costly barriers to regeneration like the 20 per cent Value Added Tax on retrofit and renovation.

Lastly, civic high streets can also shift from extractive ownership to models which embed community wealth and social benefit. Retail-led high streets have enabled distant investors to exploit property prices and, where markets have faltered, leave their investments empty to decline. IPPR’s research on regional rebalancing underscores the salience of this problem, as communities in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods understand intuitively ‘that “someone is still making money” from places in decline’.

Andy Burnham has expressed a desire for more decisive public control in our utilities where private ownership has made the essentials of daily life too expensive or too poorly run. Extending this idea to the high street and embracing the most local forms of ownership and control can ensure high streets are stewarded for long-term public benefit. Mathew Lawrence and Alex Williams’ Productive State report proposes a more diverse expression of public control than just the national public corporation through democratic ownership, inclusive of models like community businesses and co-operatives.

Greater partnership between the local state and communities to accrue investment and manage risk is also possible. Local government possesses the tools, but often not the capability, to remodel the high street and revive neglected buildings. Combining councils’ legislative powers like compulsory purchase orders with communities’ innovation and entrepreneurialism can deliver vibrant places in stable community ownership. We can look to models like the public-community partnership between Kirklees council and the Arcade Group community benefit society which has enabled the purchase, renovation and reopening of a Victorian grade-II listed shopping arcade, managed by the community and providing space for local entrepreneurs.

Burnham has begun to set out what he has described as a ten-year vision to change the country. The political reality, and the public’s impatience for change, will demand results far sooner. Setting out an ambitious, progressive policy agenda for the high street early in his premiership can help create something more than just hope. Renewed high streets are a clear symbol of change.

Jessica Craig is the Policy Manager at Power to Change.