Greens announce three-step plan to boost High Streets across the country
Green Party leader Zack Polanski and newly elected Gorton and Denton MP, Hannah Spencer, will use a visit to a High Street in Manchester today to announce a three-step plan to revive High Streets that will enable local communities to reclaim them.
The Green Party will call for:
1. Affordable leases for local businesses on every high street to end dominance of multinational chains and help independent traders to thrive.
2. Using powers such as compulsory purchase orders to bring long-term empty shops back into public use to get art, leisure and music back into High Streets.
3. Giving residents a real voice in shaping their High Streets, putting decisions in the hands of local people and making sure the money spent in the local community stays there.
Green Party spokesperson: “We want our high streets to be hubs for our communities to come together – places where small, local businesses thrive; where empty spaces are used for the benefit of the community, and where residents can have direct input into how their neighbourhoods are planned and developed.”
Zack Polanski said:
“Green Party Councillors would put the interests of the local community first – above a corporation’s private property rights, and will use the powers local authorities have to over empty and derelict properties and get our High Streets thriving again. Our three-step plan will keep wealth in the very communities that generate it and make high streets places that reflect local priorities. We will also extend rent controls to small shop premises, giving councils the power to prevent landlords from hiking up the price and driving out independent retailers.”
Hannah Spencer said:
“Our high streets can and should go back to being places that serve the needs of the communities they’re in, instead of making corporate chains even richer. Too many of our high streets are either boarded up or full of huge companies that suck money out of our local economies and pay profits to big bosses and private shareholders. Entire streets have been hollowed out, and so many places are a bad mix of boarded-up shop fronts, bookies or vape shops. This does nothing to improve the well-being of people in our communities, and it drains our local economies. We feel this so much more deeply in the North. Our three-step plan will reverse High Street decline and give us back town centres that we can be proud of.”
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