What to do about towns in England.

A longer read for Christmas

This is a longer Christmas special post - three times the length of my usual “op-ed” length pieces. The quid pro quo is that I will take next week off - well, it is Christmas, after all.

Photo of Hastings by Emma Wang on Unsplash

Introduction

British towns are not thriving, and we as a nation have no clear sense of their purpose. The last 25 years have seen people move towards cities. More couples have two earners, doubling the cost of commuting into a city. City crime has fallen, and school standards have risen. Cities are more attractive than a generation ago. Towns sometimes seem to be left behind.

Britain does not have a clear definition of a town, as opposed to a village or a city. As a rough guide, I am thinking of places big enough to have a secondary school, but too small to have a university.

A city will always be the dominant hub for its area. At least in London’s case, more people would like to live in the city than can do so. They are pushed out by higher house prices and rents. Many people in St Albans or Esher would jump at the chance to live in Chelsea if house prices were the same. Even the poshest commuter town is full of people priced out of central London. London will always be more expensive than its commuter towns. That creates a clear purpose both for expensive commuter towns such as St.Albans and cheaper ones, such as my home town of Chatham. These places’ clear raison d’être means we do not have to worry about their prospects.

Towns and connectivity

Better transport links cannot much expand this group of towns. Train fares, quite rightly, relate to distance and higher commuting costs blunt the appeal of places further away. Peterborough has good trains to London, but a season ticket for the 76 mile journey is rightly £3000 more expensive than one for the 34 mile journey from Chatham. That cost makes people less willing to commute from Peterborough: we can see that in the lower property prices in Peterborough than in Chatham.

This is even clearer for places further away. A season ticket from Doncaster to London is less than half as expensive per mile as one from Chatham, the trains are more spacious and travel roughly twice as fast. Yet houses in Doncaster are half as expensive as those in Chatham, because Doncaster is just too far for commuting.

London house prices mean that many people have to commute, but that is not true for people who work in Birmingham, Manchester and our other big cities. One bedroom flats start under £100,000 right in the heart of Birmingham and Manchester, and three bedroom houses within three miles of the centre start at £160,000 in Birmingham, and even less in Manchester. Few people are priced out of these cities.

Rochdale has a brilliant train service to Manchester: frequent trains taking about fifteen minutes. Time wise, Rochdale is to Manchester, what Wimbledon is to London. It is certainly much better connected than Chatham. But Rochdale is not a commuter centre like Wimbledon or Chatham because anyone working in Manchester can afford to live in Manchester. It is unlikely that Manchester’s housing will ever be so expensive as to force lots of people out of Manchester. If a fifteen minute commute can’t make Rochdale prosperous, we need to be cautious about assuming that good transport links will bring prosperity to towns.

Understanding towns

Towns are boring. They always will be. Not as boring as villages, but definitely more boring than cities. They will always have a narrower range of restaurants. They will have fewer things to do in the evening, particularly for people with minority tastes. There won’t be a “Chinatown” in a town. There probably won’t be a theatre either, and if there is, it is unlikely to show a particularly wide range of shows, or have performances of a particularly high standard. The Christmas panto may be the highlight. (Oh no it won’t. Oh yes it will…)

A route to success?

I propose that towns build on that boringness. Boring is appealing to people at a particular stage of life. Boring and safety go hand in hand, and a lot of young families like the idea of bringing their children up somewhere safe. Surbiton is boring. I have lived here now for 23 years, so I know. The majority of my neighbours have not moved in that time. It is a very stable community. I know most of my neighbours, we look out for each other. It is a good place to bring up children.

Towns need to be conceptualised for families. They need to have very low crime levels. They should have high levels of owner occupation, and social housing - both of which typically have longer tenure. That creates the sort of place where neighbours get to know each other, knowing that the investment in meeting people is worthwhile. The private rented sector is less well suited to creating this sort of community because people typically move more often. Conceptualising a place for families also points to the disproportionate provision of family sized housing, rather than smaller flats. Step-free flats for the elderly should be encouraged, of course: we want grandparents to be able to move near to their children and grandchildren.

This also points to the massive provision of family friendly facilities. This means both free provision (parks), and paid for provision (bowling alleys, indoor climbing, and so on). It also means lots of provision for groups: mother and toddler groups, youth groups such as the Scouts, and so on.

It means being able to get to see your GP immediately, or having a very good walk-in centre for when your child is ill. Where possible it should mean having a hospital in which you can give birth. Not a super high-tech hospital, just one for regular routine births.

The primary and secondary schools must be inclusive. They should guarantee entrance to anyone local. If that means a bulge class some years, so be it. If you move to the town, you should be absolutely sure that your child will get into a local primary school and the local secondary school. Your children will be able to walk to school, or take a bike. Their friends will be close by, they will be part of the same community. Schools in these places should have something very close to a “no exclusions” policy. There should be special educational needs provision within local schools, for all but the most specialist cases. These should be community schools, in the community, of the community, for the community.

Schools should offer lots of volunteering possibilities, often aimed at the older generation. Primary schools in particular should be encouraging lots of grandparents and people of similar age to come in at lunchtime. They can sit around the edge of the playground and watch the children play. Little children like coming over to elderly people and telling them stuff. “Look, I have a ball”.

The town must have a High Street, but not on the traditional model. The High Street needs to be a destination, but that does not mean a traditional set of shops, patronised by women who buy food each day to cook an evening meal for their husband and children. Those days are (thankfully) gone. Instead, the High Street needs to be as much about activity as the sale of goods.

Much nonsense is written about business rates. Most small shops, cafés etc pay no business rates, because none are levied if the rateable value is under £12,000. But they do pay rent, and in many poorer towns rents are too high. By that I mean that they are above the market equilibrium rent - as evidenced by empty shops. Thankfully last year the government enacted one of my ideas - High Street Rental Auctions. The government has just published the guidance for local authorities. In essence, if a High Street shop or similar is empty for more than a year, the local authority can hold an auction to find a tenant for up to five years. The landlord has to choose one of the bids, no matter how low. This means that in many areas there will be a plethora of low cost opportunities for people to start new ventures on the High Street.

If the rent is low enough, and there are no rates, lots of things are viable. This will include conventional shops and cafés - it is not hard to make a living if you have no fixed costs. Entrepreneurs will also try new things. Tanning salons and nail parlours have no appeal to me, but they are now an important part of High Streets. Who knows what the next generation of High Street entrepreneurs will offer?

As well as for-profit ventures, low cost premises will allow voluntary groups to find premises. This could include drop-in children’s play centres, informal community centres for older people. The police could even reopen police stations in the heart of the community.

The NHS could open a nurse-led centre. The local library could open a new library, and stock it with very cheap second-hand books. The local FE college could have a small set of classrooms, and run entire courses, drop-in tuition sessions, or offer a quiet place for kids to do their homework. You could imagine a real sense of community developing around some of these things: lots of opportunities for volunteering.

Low rent is key. Cities will, by and large, never be able to offer this sort of thing at scale, because cities are economically successful and therefore rents are high. But if towns can offer it, they will attract people to live there. That will include people who want that sense of community, as well as people who are attracted by a very low rent for a business idea that they have. It is literally a win-win, and I hope lots of Local Authorities use this new approach.

Towns also need a centre. Ideally a theatre, with a screen that can show films. Let’s change the law so that all films can be shown in all venues, from launch day. Payment to the film maker should be a fee per viewer. Everybody can read a blockbuster book on the day it comes out: let’s make it the same for movies, and put towns on an equal footing with the city. The theatre could also show Wimbledon finals, the FA cup, the Royal Wedding, and Games of Thrones. If the seating can slide away, it can be used for sports in the day time, or for mother and toddler groups, or yoga. Let’s put the library in the same place, so that people walk through the library to get to the cinema. And have a café in the foyer.

Towns should try to integrate old people. With low rents, we can have cafés that old people are encouraged to come to, where a fiver a day gets you unlimited tea and coffee, and a lunchtime meal. People will talk to each other, combating loneliness.

Towns should be nice. There should be good street trees, and well-tended parks. There should be civic pride - towns should be winning the Britain in Bloom competition every year. They should spend lots of money picking up litter. Getting rid of crime should be seen as an absolute priority, helped by the fact that crime is typically lower in smaller communities. Police Community Support Officers are exactly what is needed, and they are affordable.

At present, the national police grant is allocated according to how much crime is in an area. That means that low crime towns are subsidising high crime cities. That should stop - if you want to live in a city, you should pay for the necessary extra police. Towns should keep their money, and use it for the things that matter to them. In general, towns will have relatively low costs, as they will not have many expensive services (high crime rates, expensive public transport). Instead of spending money on those things, they will be able to afford to keep the town really nice, as well as keeping crime low.

Tony Pidgley, the late founder of Berkeley Homes, once told me that people are keen to volunteer if the local streetscape is interesting, and the area is run by a charity such as the Wildlife and Wetlands Trust. They will not volunteer to work for a commercial firm, a management company, or the local council. So it makes sense to give parks to well-established charities like this. The council would give the charity a grant every year, or perhaps an endowment, and then the charity would find local volunteers to help. This would have the double benefit of improving areas as well as building a community.

Finally, where will the people work? Some will commute (by train or car – most places are near a big place). Some will downsize their jobs, since the cost of living in the town will be lower than in the city. Some will work in good local jobs – teachers, doctors, etc. The hope is that the place will create more of a buzz that will attract and create local jobs as well. After all, commuting by train and car are typically the “least enjoyable activities” people do each day. There are jobs that can be in places like this – conveyancing, para-legal and entrepreneurs start firms in all sorts of places.

I cannot promise you that this will work. But if you can think of a better way to conceptualize a great future for Corby, Kettering and Kiddermister, I am all ears.

Whether you live in a town, a city or a village, let me wish you a very merry Christmas and happy new year. See you in 2025.