As the Government proposes that business rates should rise by an average of 10 per cent, before inflation, over the next five years, Darren Johnson is calling on the London Mayor to lobby the government to issue automatic business rate relief for all small businesses that are eligible. London’s high streets have already become casualties in the fallout from the recession. Nine out of ten London boroughs responding to a recent survey on empty shops reported an increase in empty properties in town centres in the capital.
Many of London’s local shopping streets were badly wounded last year when the closure of 154 post offices was confirmed. The number of post offices in the capital has dropped by 25% since 2004, compared to a 7% decline nationally.
To put the capital’s local shopping areas on the road to recovery, Darren Johnson is prescribing five anti-recession remedies:
1.) The London Mayor should set up a ‘Little Spaces’ scheme, with the boroughs, to complement his ‘Great Spaces’ initiative. The Little Spaces scheme would aim to keep shopping parades attractive for local shoppers and combat the dereliction that might otherwise arise in a recession.
2.) The Mayor’s London Development Agency should work with commercial landlords to promote a short-term tenancy scheme for vacant shops to prevent high streets turning into ghost towns and keep community spirit alive. Councils should also be given new powers to penalise landlords who leave shop premises empty for more than three months.
3.) The London Mayor should back the grassroots "slack space" movement which aims to provide temporary community and cultural uses, such as swap shops, debt counselling advice and art and music spaces.
4.) London councils should be given new powers to decide what post office provision is needed in their borough. By keeping post offices open the boroughs will encourage local residents onto shopping streets and will reduce post office queuing at the same time.
5.) The London Mayor should lobby the government to issue automatic business rate relief for all small businesses that are eligible. Over half of businesses entitled to rates relief do not claim it, despite government already knowing which businesses could claim.
Darren Johnson said
‘Some of London’s local shopping streets are in danger of being wiped out by the recession. Empty shops are creating ghost towns that can become hotspots for crime and anti-social behaviour. The Mayor urgently needs to draw up a rescue plan for local shopping streets and add this to his Economic Recovery Action Plan, before our local high streets are eradicated forever’.
Notes
1. On 28th February 2009 the Local Government Association announced that it had sent out a survey to all local authority leaders on the impact of empty shops in town centres. 90% of the ten London councils that responded to this enquiry reported an increase in the number of empty shops.
2. 85% of the council responses received nationally claimed to have seen an increase in the number of empty shops in town centres.
3. In February 2008 Post Office Ltd announced the planned closure of 169 branches. After the consultation period the number of closures fell to 154
4. The London Assembly’s Health and Public Services Committee’s response to Post Office Ltd’s consultation on the London Area Plan Proposal 2008 found that London was disproportionately disadvantaged by a decline in network coverage.
http://www.london.gov.uk/assembly/reports/health/post-office-consultat
ion.pdf
5. In 2008 Essex County Council suggested that a radical division
be established between Post Office Ltd’s commercial assets, such as
its products (broadband, ISAs and its national contracts such as Post
Office Card Account) and its community assets – the branch network. In
this model the local becomes a custodian of the branch network giving
Post Office Ltd the freedom to act as a purely commercial
organisation.
6. In May 2006 a Federation of Small Businesses’ survey found that
only 49% of eligible businesses were claiming Business Rate Relief.