High Streets Innovation Partnerships are being offered as the next great revival of Britain’s town centres, giving every empty shop a brief and a hopeful look at the door. The Government has announced £319 million for local renewal, including £301 million for the partnerships, so the nation’s vacant units can finally stop pretending that “coming soon” is a business model.
The plan is intended to help communities reimagine struggling high streets as mixed use spaces containing homes, health services, libraries, community hubs and green spaces. This is encouraging news for buildings that have spent years offering only a faded estate agent photograph and a pigeon with territorial ambitions.
Local areas will be involved in deciding what their town centres need. That sounds sensible. Residents know whether a street requires a library, a clinic or somewhere to sit without buying a coffee. They also know which empty shop has been “nearly ready” since the last government discovered regeneration.
The £301 million commitment is part of a wider package that includes £18 million for play areas in 66 communities, £20 million over ten years for places already taking part in Pride in Place, and five projects designed to make councils, schools and the NHS pool their resources.
Pooling resources is an exciting prospect for public bodies accustomed to keeping their money in separate cupboards labelled “not our responsibility”. If the experiment works, the Government says the model could be extended nationwide. Britain may soon see institutions collaborating so effectively that nobody will know who has misplaced the spreadsheet, which is the traditional first sign of progress.
The announcement also promises summer activity to increase high street footfall, alongside major cultural and sporting events. This could bring people back to town centres, provided they can navigate the roadworks, locate the car park and resist the powerful local tradition of buying everything online from a warehouse with no windows.
Allocations for the High Streets Innovation Partnerships will be confirmed in due course. Until then, the programme exists in its most successful form: fully funded, widely welcomed and not yet required to explain which empty shop gets the first plant. At last, regeneration has found a premises it can occupy indefinitely.
Source: GOV.UK.
