Scrapping Northumberland Market Town Initiative was a backward step

Scrapping Northumberland Market Town Initiative was a backward step

First it was supermarkets, then out of town shopping; now it’s buying on line. One way or the other our high streets are not what they used to be. The answer to that is our shopping habits are not what they used to be.

Whether you think supermarkets were the greatest invention because you could get what you needed in one place, out of town shopping centres gave you all the big brands under one roof and on line means you can shop without leaving your armchair, we’ve all got to take responsibility for what’s happened to our high street.

It’s that way because we’ve made it that way. And we can’t have our cake and eat it.

So, what to do? A recent report in our county’s high streets by retail expert Bill Grimsby said we all needed to be thinking – NOW – about what to do when the big brands pull out of the high street. It’s no good waiting ‘til they’ve gone as can already be seen in some of our towns.

It’s clear to see that towns with tourism like Morpeth, Hexham and Alnwick do a bit better than towns without. I’m not saying it’s easy but they can attract visitors with independent shops and cafes. But what about towns like Ashington, Blyth, Bedlington and Prudhoe? Somehow they’ve got to make their high streets attractive to the people who live there.

In the last few weeks alone, we have seen a meddled with Bedlington plan pause. We are told it will be back on track soon. This is a typical picture of the Tory administration pausing, costing a fortune to meddle in projects and plans that would be revitalising to towns.

Part of Bill Grimsby’s advice was to use old buildings for business start-ups and make old shops into community spaces for art, leisure and entertainment; basically find ways to bring people into the high street for reasons other than shopping.

I support this view. The Council, who are major property owners and can support this type of thing, should indeed be bringing it forward. With the soon to be extinct enterprise and start up grants from the EU someone else, the council needs to step up to the mark.

Let’s look at Ashington, one of the biggest towns in Northumberland, totally abandoned regeneration initiative as part of the Market Town Initiative set up by the Council previously. It was driven by nothing other than political spite and disrespect for the people of that town.

For example, in Hexham the Labour-led council invested more than £2m to open a new bus station to provide a welcoming facility for residents and visitors. Hexham also has a new wedding venue, Hexham House which were run down Council offices. In addition to weddings it now has holiday accommodation and the town also has a new fire station.

This is why I just can’t understand why our Tory council has scrapped the Market Town Initiative we introduced a couple of years ago. The initiative was a way of getting everyone’s heads together and thinking of how we could breathe new life into our high streets. Working with communities, town and parish councils, business clubs and others, the Labour administration plans ensured Northumberland towns would buck the trend.

From 2010 to 2020, the council was told it needed to make savings of £200m. It took some unpopular decisions like putting leisure centres, libraries and tourist information centres together. But do you know what – this meant longer opening hours for all of these services. It also meant we could keep these services open for people to use, something many councils didn’t manage to do. You don’t have to look very far back to remember libraries and leisure centres closing down all over the country.

The Market Town Initiative gave the council a way of really understanding what was going on in each of the towns in our county and finding ways to work with businesses and local people to see how they could be revitalised.

So what a backward step it was to drop it, a forward step would be to realise the mistake and get on with the job. The Labour-led council was trying to bite the bullet. Our Tory friends just seem to have their heads in the sand. This is so disrespectful of people living in our towns who need the council’s leadership and support to make their towns lively and vibrant.