Leadership candidates’ plans to bring hope to the high street
Ahead of the Labour leadership election vote, Ruth Mosalski asked the three candidates to give us their views on key issues facing Wales. Today they tell us how they would help turn around struggling town centres
ACROSS Wales, town centres are struggling. With the now regular announcements of another shop closing its doors, trade is getting harder.
In the budget, Philip Hammond said business rates will be cut by a third for two years for shops, pubs, restaurants and cafes in England with a rateable value of £51,000 and under in a bid to save Britain’s high street.
Since that was announced, business owners in Wales have been asking if the same will happen in Wales.
In the wake of the announcement, the Federation in Small Business in Wales said they wanted to see some of the extra £550m promised to Wales invested in business rate relief like in the English scheme.
“We hope to see Welsh Government looking closely at how they can increase relief for small businesses, following on from the action taken by the Chancellor,” said Ben Francis from the policy unit.
But, we wanted to know if the three people who want to be First Minister plan on doing the same thing to help struggling businesses in Wales. We’ve been asking them about key devolved issues and what they will do, if they are appointed to the job.
Here’s how they answered: ■
“Our town centres are being challenged by a significant increase in on-line shopping from web sites which often do not pay a fair level of tax. In addition to this, the cost of town centre parking is often prohibitive for many. We need to ensure that public transport is cheaper and more readily available to encourage people to use our town centres.
“I will investigate the introduction of a Cymru Currency to see if we can encourage people to spend more of our Welsh money locally.
“The Welsh Government already gives significant support to help SMEs with business rate relief. I will assemble a panel of experts to give advice on revising taxation in Wales. This will be a no holds-barred opportunity to ensure fairness in our taxation system including income tax, council tax, business rates, land tax and any other relevant taxes. this team can investigate how best to support our town centres.
“I will commission the panel to ensure that we maximise the opportunity to fund our public services whilst ensuring that we encourage new jobs and stimulate investment.
“The best way for us to tackle poverty and create jobs is by growing the economy throughout the whole of Wales, including in our cities our villages and our town centres.”
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“During the time that I’ve been Finance Minister we have put a permanent scheme of small business rate relief on the Statute Book here in Wales for the first time and out of a budget that I have to manage we already spend more than
£200m every year in helping businesses with business rates.
“We are committed to looking at any money that has come to Wales in the Chancellor’s Budget last week and to see how we can make that work to help businesses in Wales still further.
“The challenges of the High Street go far beyond business rates.
“However, I had an opportunity to discuss with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury the plans the Chancellor has to tax businesses that operate without a High Street premises, and that’s an important step forward.
“There are other things that we are doing as a Welsh Government to improve the physical infrastructure of town centres, to make them more attractive places for people to visit, to use anchor businesses like pharmacies – more than 600 of them on the High Street here in Wales – and to work with the retail sector to create a successful future.” ■
“We need to reinvigorate small and medium sized businesses across Wales, particularly in our town centres.
“I’ve been clear that in order to support our town centres across Wales, we need to empower local authorities to ensure they have the fiscal tools to ensure their communities thrive.
“I recently announced my new deal with local authorities.
“I want to reset the relationship with our councils and ensure they have greater control over the way they spend their budgets.
“I also announced that I want local authorities to retain business rate growth within their regional groups.
“Councils are best placed to understand their regions and know how best to support their town centres. I’m keen to work closely with local government to tackle this problem that is blighting so many of our communities.”