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: