High street policy needs to be more ambitious than this
After recently opening a Pandora’s box of government high street funding debacles, I expected an angry response from Portas Pilot proponents. But to criticise me, as Keren Suchecki has, for being ‘ill informed’, ‘unfair and writing off all the Portas Pilots in one go is a tad overly defensive. It’s also untrue.
For me the Portas Pilots were a breath of fresh air and I’ve often spoken of my admiration at how Mary Portas has grasped the high street agenda, forced it on to the front page and made ministers start to think about an area that had previously been an afterthought.
Some of the Portas Pilots are achieving good things and I’m impressed at the momentum being built up in places like Market Rasen and Nelson. But to pretend this is happening everywhere would be misleading.
The clear picture I’m getting from speaking to people up and down the country, visiting other towns, meeting those involved and going through a breakdown of where the money has been spent is one of bureaucratic paralysis. What’s starting to shine through the highfaluting rhetoric, the smiling photo shoots, ministerial visits and simpering coverage is that this is policy on the cheap. However well intentioned it is, the high street needs bigger policy levers being pulled and it also needs better delivery bodies to realize the true spirit behind the pilots.
Staying true to the spirit of the pilots is one thing, but some don’t even resemble the original application that won them pilot status in the first place. In Bedminster’s case, ministers announced this as a bid to deliver street art and street theatre. Now Suchecki informs us that it’s actually a Business Improvement District.
The Portas Pilots were supposed to be about blazing a trail of creativity and bringing fresh ideas to our high streets. Grant Shapps said they would be ‘the vanguard of a high street revolution’. A Business Improvement District is none of these things. They were launched in the UK around 10 years ago, and while I’m all in favour of them, they hardly epitomise the spirit of creative experimentalism that Portas Pilots were supposed to promote.
Neither was the decision by Bedminster to put in an expenses claim of £2,000 to pay for the cost of their application. Is this an example of the ‘bureaucracy free’ spirit that Suchecki talks about?
Talk to anyone who understands the challenges of retail and they’ll tell you that Portas Pilots are no substitute for serious policy changes desperately needed to grasp the nettle of business rates, credit insurance and out of town developments among other things.
Supplemented with bigger, serious and well-funded government policy to support the UK’s biggest private sector employer they would be acceptable. But on their own and heralded as the government’s flagship retail policy…well, it’s simply not enough.
Compare the paltry funding given by government to Portas Pilots to the multi-billion pound package launched by Peter Mandelson in 2009 to protect the UK car industry. A sense of where the high street appears in ministerial priorities becomes only too clear. This is further amplified by blithe statements from Vince Cable, who really should know better, to the effect that there is no crisis on the high street.
Perhaps if this lack of urgency wasn’t also shown by those administering Portas Pilots then I’d be less inclined to criticise. But here, as with government ministers, there is also an overwhelming sense of complacency. Money sitting in the bank unspent, town teams still at first base 12 months on and worrying signs of a growing manana mentality. While thousands of jobs disappear from the high street every month the likes of Suchecki think ‘long term schemes’ are what’s needed. They’re not. An immediate shot in the arm, a change of culture and a sense of urgency is what’s needed to stem the bloodshed.
But above all Portas Pilots need to be serious. In most cases they are. But I’m afraid the ridiculous hoopla and razzmatazz of a reality TV circus that’s followed the pilots has done more harm than good. In some cases I believe it’s undermined a real community commitment and left people utterly disillusioned. On this point, I note that even Suchecki has previously blogged that these ‘shenanigans may turn out to be nothing more than a government sponsored publicity stunt’.
You’re not wrong Keren. In fact I couldn’t agree more.
Not a single apology for getting a host of facts wrong. Why anyone would want to heed the words of someone who is clearly in it for the attention and publicity beats me
What facts are wrong Felix? Please tell.
Think you’ll find that many people would prefer to heed the words of a small trader at the coalface who has to deal with reality every day, rather than pundits and consultants who just make money out of talking nonsense.
What facts are wrong then. Presume all the national media have seen the FOIs?
At the end of the day I assume all the facts are contained within the FOIs given by the council who are responsible for the money.
Given the bloodbath on the high street at the moment and it could be retail that pushes the country into a triple dip, surely, this guy is right in that more is needed from government?
I have no quarrel with Paul-Turner Mitchell’s general thesis that lots of Portas stuff is PR heavy and that the government has yet to take this issue seriously, but his main message is marred by inaccuracies relating to Bedminster in Bristol. These are important to us, although of less interest, I suppose, to others. Example 1: why does he suggest that innovative ideas and more established ones are alternatives? Our Business Improvement District is innovative for our area because we have not got one and is clearly referred to as a goal in our Portas application. Example 2: The £2K ‘expenses claim’ referred to has not come from the Portas money as implied but from another source entirely. We’ve actually raised quite a lot of additional money.
Let’s encourage debate, but let’s keep it accurate.
I suggest that if Paul wants information about the Bedminster Town Team he comes to me. Cheers, Ben (Chair, Bedminster Town Team).
Hi Paul
Bedminster’s original proposal made it very clear that it would partly involve creating a BID. You can download that document at http://www.bedminstertownteam.org/about/our-winning-application where you can also see the street art and theatre aspects that are being delivered as promised. Obviously the application was approved by government, so there’s no controversy in creating a BID. The activity taking place more than resembles the original proposal: it’s doing exactly what it said it would.
I agree with a lot of what you have to say, more serious policy is needed. I did say your criticism was ill-informed in that the FOI asked a very narrow question which gave little information and went on to suggest a wider question would have garnered more informed results. I’m sorry if that offended you.
I did make that cynical comment about Portas Pilots possibly being nothing more than a publicity stunt, and I’m still inclined to harbour that suspicion, given that serious policy change hasn’t followed. However, in that same blog, I was optimistic about the Bedminster proposal and I remain so. What I think about Bedminster is separate from what I think about the overall initiative.
In the interests of fairness I used my blog to show that what’s happening in Bedminster is very different to the portrayal of the pilots in the mainstream press.
Paul T-M.
For Bedminster Town Team’s art etc projects for recent past, present and future please see https://www.facebook.com/bedminsterbristol.bs3
You will find two major arts launches in March alone – you’re very welcome to come along, enjoy the fun and we’ll cut a couple of hours to talk properly about what we are doing in Bedminster.
Re your criticisms of BIDs – even ignoring the fact that it was central to our original application I have to ask you the question:
How are all the Town Teams without BIDs going to be funded once their £100K runs out? (we’ll have nearly £100K every year and a collective purchasing arm that will save the Independent businesses twice as much as they invest in the BID).
Finally urgency. We’ve either spent or committed our entire £100K and raised nearly as much in other grants, private sector funded projects and probono legal and PR advice. Plus the BID will raise circa £1m in funding and savings for local businesses helping both ‘top’ and ‘bottom line’.
Not a bad return in 8 months I’d say?