ANNELIESE Dodds, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, called for urgent action to support high streets across the West Midlands and UK on Monday.
On a visit to Birmingham city centre with Labour’s candidate for West Midlands Mayor Liam Byrne, Dodds launched Labour’s five-point plan to “put communities first” and support Britain’s high streets.
Calling the loss of the city’s flagship John Lewis store “heartbreaking” and condemning the Conservative government for “washing its hands of our high streets” over the last 10 years, she outlined Labour’s vision to reverse town centre decline.
It included stopping the Conservatives selling off Britain’s high streets for low-quality housing, by scrapping new planning rules, empowering councils to fill empty shops with new businesses to breathe life into town centres and establishing a High Streets Fightback Fund to help businesses hit hard by the pandemic get back on their feet.
The Shadow Chancellor said: “In the ten years before the pandemic hit the West Midlands lost over a thousand shops.
“The pandemic has hit Birmingham hard, with footfall in the city centre taking longer to recover here than anywhere other than London and Glasgow.
“For our country’s second city, this loss of custom and shops is devastating.
“For some of our smaller towns, it’s existential.”
Liam Byrne, Labour candidate for West Midlands Mayor said: “Our small businesses are going to be hit hard by the coming recession, and that’s on top of what we’ve already lost.
“Under our Tory Mayor, we’ve already been hard hit. It’s not just the John Lewis that’s closed at Grand Central
“Across the West Midlands our high street vacancy rate is up, with nearly one in six shops now empty. In some of our suburbs it is higher.
“This is much higher than London where only one in 10 are empty, or the South East where it is one in nine. We can’t go on like this.”
Ikea closed its UK flagship store in Coventry city centre last March due to operating costs and dwindling visitor numbers. The city has also recently faced the blow of losing its iconic Debenhams store in the West Orchards Shopping Centre.
Labour’s plan for a new ‘Empty Shops Order’, enabling councils to revitalise commercial properties left vacant for 12 months is similar to a recommendation made by Mary Portas in her 2011 review into the future of UK high streets, which was rejected by the government.
