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Agenda item

High Streets Review: Draft Report and Recommendations

Minutes:

8.1      Roger Raymond, Scrutiny Manager introduced the report. The key points to note were:

 

·         The Committee had to consider and agree the draft review report

·         The Committee had to consider the draft recommendations in the report and any other presented by Committee Members.

·         The Committee should note that the final report, including the recommendations agreed at this meeting, will be presented to Mayor and Cabinet at the next available opportunity

 

8.2      In response to questions from the Committee, the following was noted:

 

8.3      RESOLVED: That the Committee agree the report and the following recommendations:

 

  • Recommendation 1: Shopping habits, retail centres and high streets are changing, and as a Council we need to make sure that we are keeping pace. As a Planning Authority, the Council needs to make sure its planning policy is fast, flexible and open minded, so as to readily adapt to multi-configurations and future reconfiguration options that an evolving future high street will need. Lewisham Council should consider how it would deal with non-traditional pop up activity within our Borough, whether that’s the top floor of a car park being turned into a garden market restaurant and farm, or a unit that has a rolling programme of pop ups with an activity programme that cuts across several planning class uses. 

 

  • Recommendation 2: Lewisham is establishing a positive name as a Local Authority for being open to innovation in our town centres and high streets. Projects such as the Mary Portas SEE3 pilots, Street Feast Model Market project or the Catford Canteen have all added to that reputation – and serious consideration should be given on how we can embed that opinion and increase the number of these opportunities setting up in our borough.

 

  • Recommendation 3: The Council should look to help with the reimaging of our public space through ‘place making’ and creating town centres with ‘experiential’ entertainment activity. The Council should look at directly funding, or working with other funding partners (Regional National & European), to facilitate the animation of our high streets, through pop-up shops, arts and community activity. It was also noted that “quirk” and “experience” were key ‘pull’ drivers for visitors to commercial/entertainment centres, and any such activity should look to capitalise on those elements.

 

  • Recommendation 4: The Council should look at further developing night time economies across the Borough to offer a rich mix of restaurants, bars, recreational activities, and cinemas. During the committee’s deliberations it became apparent that for large high streets and town centres to thrive, there needs to be a mix of retail, commercial, and entertainment and have both day and night time usage. There are some sections of our communities like young professionals and students that can significantly add to making a night time economy viable. It would therefore be desirous for the Council to enter talks with local post compulsory education providers to discuss ways in which we could create the conditions for more students to live in the locality of Lewisham and Catford Town centres.

 

  • Recommendation 5: the Council needs to develop a clear, proactive ‘Meanwhile Use’ policy, for commercial properties where it is a landlord either directly or at arm’s length. This policy needs to realise that an empty property has a significant impact upon local amenity and the perception of the success of a high streets. It is this committees position that it is more desirous for a ‘meanwhile tenant’ to be brought in so as to animate a section of a high street or town centre, at a peppercorn rent, then having an empty decaying shell that is bringing in no rent or business rates. The Council should also look at developing partnership with meanwhile use charities/organisations, for both meanwhile usage of council voids, but also as a service that we promote to external commercial property freeholders across the Borough. The Council should also take learnings from the collaboration between Brent Council and Locality, in their establishment of www.meanwhile.org.uk and any other similar meanwhile use charity, so as to fully understand the scope and potential we can unlock.

 

  • Recommendation 6: For the Council to do more about poor quality frontages on our high streets. Our high streets can be blighted by run down frontages from both active and inactive commercial properties, much like the ‘broken window’ theory an ill-kept property on a high street can cause further deterioration in the locality. It is therefore recommended that the Council give much greater consideration to the use of ‘section 215 notices’ on high street properties that give powers to the Local Authority to be able require property owners to improve their land/property to stop negatively affecting local amenity.

 

  • Recommendation 7: It is recommended that the Council give consideration to extending its ‘free for 30 minutes’ parking policy that operates in places like Sydenham, to other high streets and shopping areas around Lewisham.

 

  • Recommendation 8: The role of markets, such as that in Lewisham Town Centre, as a key asset of the borough, that animates the town centre and meets the needs of a broader spectrum of shoppers than supermarkets alone, must be protected. However it is recommended that the Council invest in the aesthetic of the Market so as to improve the visual impact of the locality.

 

  • Recommendation 9: Committee noted that the commercial/retail offer in mixed use planning developments, seemed to create vacant units that could often remain as such for a significant periods of time. It is therefore recommended that we review the combination of mixes and configurations that we are offering, to include planning use classes of A3, D1, D2, and in so doing improve the amenity of an area.

 

Supporting documents: