Protecting our market towns and the small shops on the High Street

Along with our beautiful countryside and stunning coastline, one of the great treasures of Torridge are our market towns. Holsworthy, Torrington and Bideford are all vital centres for our local community and we must do all we can to safeguard them, particularly in the light of the damage done by the previous Labour Government’s complete lack of interest in anything beyond the major cities.

If our market towns are the community’s backbone, the thing that ensures their survival more than anything else is the independent trader, the small retailer who not only brings in business, but gives a town its personality.

Last week, I held a meeting in Torrington to bring together independent market town traders from across Torridge to discuss their concerns and suggestions for improvements to their high streets. It was a productive session, and as I suspected, common themes quickly emerged. The availability of parking, the multiplication of charity shops, business rates, the condition of town centre buildings, the policing of loutish behaviour in town centres, planning consent for major chains- all of these things, if got right, make a huge difference to the shopping environment and encourage people to the towns rather than abandon them for the large supermarkets. I was delighted to welcome local councillors, and officers of both Torridge District Council and of the County Council to the discussion too. I know that they want to do all they can to help, and I hope that our meeting may in time lead on to a proper strategy for the high street, which will have at its heart the welfare of this vital part of our market towns.

Planning is seldom an issue to stir the blood and arouse the passions. But it is crucial nonetheless. Unwise decisions by councils and laws passed in haste by Parliament can literally destroy our small towns, causing our high street and town centres to lose their character and sense of place, and ensuring that shoppers abandon them.

In 2008, I was part of a Commission into Small Shops in the High Street, which set out a series of suggestions that research showed would help small shops to continue to thrive in our high streets. Local development frameworks to ensure that the ratio of charity shops to other retail outlets is balanced within market towns, reform of business rates so that they are fairer for smaller retailers, reform of the planning system, and the opening of car parks of local authority buildings to shoppers at weekends; all of these ideas, among others, would do something to improve the current situation. You can read the Commission’s report, and e mail me with your ideas, on my website at www.geoffreycox.co.uk

Some of these recommendations are already being adopted for future legislation of the government. Others have not. Now that we have a new Government, I am determined to do whatever I can to encourage implementation, where possible, of the suggestions put forward in the Commission. We need to see an awareness from the government and local authorities of the plight of many small high street traders and to create better conditions for their survival before it is too late.