With the reintroduction of pandemic restrictions, Covid-19 once again threatens the future viability of many of our towns and cities. Any further reduction in workers in our town and city centres will risk the future of businesses, such as cafes and coffee shops, that depend on a consistent supply of commuters and office workers. Combined with increasingly empty retail units and greater rates of online shopping, even a relatively small increase in long-term homeworking could threaten towns, cities and high streets as we know them.
As such, now is the time to take action to safeguard them, before it is too late. Thriving towns and cities are fundamental to our wellbeing as individuals, communities and as a nation. After all, it is towns and cities that provide many of us with the building blocks for our lives—housing, public transport, green spaces, workspaces, public services and leisure opportunities. If they become dilapidated, it is inevitable that our individual and collective wellbeing will suffer.
That is why the House of Lords Covid-19 Committee decided to concentrate on the impact of the pandemic on our towns and cities, and specifically on larger towns and smaller cities. Rather than London, we focused on places such as Swansea, Winchester, Bradford, Luton, Great Yarmouth, Inverness and Lisburn.
The seismic changes to our behaviour brought about by the pandemic—increased home working, more online shopping, growing online provision of essential services—mean that we must reimagine towns and cities for the future, rather than pining for the urban areas of the past. Instead of looking backwards, we must all—central government, local authorities, businesses and residents—look forwards, and work together to turn our towns and cities into the vibrant places that they can, and should, be. This is what we envision in our report Towns and Cities: Local Power is the Path to Recovery.
Underlying our proposals is a need to empower local leaders. We want to see the UK government outline, in its levelling-up white paper, its plans for the further devolution of financial and legislative powers. These additional powers would enable local authority leaders to deliver regeneration policies tailored to the needs of their areas. We believe that the pandemic provides the perfect opportunity to reconsider the current business rates system, and explore the potential for introducing a new ring-fenced online sales tax to balance decreasing revenue from business rates. Finally, we want the UK government to replace the current annual local government financial settlement with a three-year rolling local government settlement, at an increased level.
Our most successful towns and cities have a strong blend of housing, retail, workplaces and leisure opportunities. To deliver this blended approach across the UK, and to increase vibrancy, we want to see the UK government providing financial support to local authority leaders to enable the establishment of work hubs and pop-up retail units, and expand the arts and culture provision in our towns and cities. We also want to see the UK government working with local authorities to ensure that regeneration and investment are not only concentrated on town and city centres, but also on improving housing, public services, public transport and green spaces in those neighbourhoods that risk being left behind.
We want tackling inequalities to be the heart of regeneration plans, and we want local authorities to develop a method for actively engaging with different groups, communities and neighbourhoods, ensuring that their views are acted upon. Beyond just listening, we believe that local authorities should develop a process that considers inequalities when assessing proposals for improving housing, green spaces, public transport provision and public services, and ensuring that the views and needs of specific groups and communities are at the heart of the decision-making process.
Beyond our detailed proposals, the future of our towns and cities is tightly entwined with broader interventions to tackle the pandemic. Even with empowered leaders, a blended approach to regeneration and an emphasis on tackling inequalities, our towns and cities will suffer if we cannot develop an effective method for dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic and other potential future upheavals.
That is why, having taken evidence on the long-term impacts of the pandemic since May 2020, the Covid-19 Committee’s legacy report—publishing in January 2022—will set out our recommendations for improving resilience and preparedness for a volatile and uncertain future.
