Our response to the Inquiry into Retail and Town Centres in Scotland
Culture Counts welcomes the Economy and Fair Work Committee’s report on their Inquiry into Retail and Town Centres in Scotland, published on 29 November 2022.
The remit of the EFW Committee’s inquiry was to:
Identify the new realities of retail and ecommerce in Scotland and the resulting impact on town centres.
Find out the subsequent policy response needed to create living and resilient town centres.
Discover innovative ways to keep town centres alive and how to support communities to regenerate their town centres.
Culture Counts participated in an evidence session on 20 April (you can read the transcript here), where we highlighted:
The role the Culture Sector can play in restoring vacant retail spaces back in to use, bringing vibrancy to town centres, in both the daytime and night-time economies.
Culture’s ability to foster connection and belonging – this being an important future motivation for visiting town centres as retail continues to face challenges.
The barriers faced by the Culture Sector in achieving redevelopment of vacant spaces.
We proposed possible solutions proposed to these issues:
An incentivised rates relief system.
Closer working between culture and business improvement districts.
Building stronger networks between culture and local authorities.
Making culture sector representatives statutory consultees on projects such as city deals.
Making change of use planning rules easier for the culture sector to bring vacant buildings back in to use.
We are pleased to see many of these recommendations reflected in the committee’s final report:
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25: The Committee agrees that the overarching principle must be rebalancing the cost of doing business in town centres versus out-of-town sites. Approaches that could be considered include giving Councils the power to levy an out-of-town development premium or a business rates surcharge which could then be used for town centre regeneration. Town centre regeneration funds from Councils or Government could be used to incentivise use of brownfield sites in town centres for retail, housing or culture and leisure purposes.
41: The Committee recognises that creating a vibrancy around "place" for all of our towns must involve Scotland's culture bodies and organisations "being at the table". We agree and recommend that they must be designated statutory consultees.
158: The Committee welcomes the Scottish Government's consultation on permitted development rights and intends to support the creation of a new general town centre use class.
212: Many of the Committee's submissions and witnesses talked about the contribution hospitality, leisure, tourism and culture can make to revitalising and bringing vibrancy back into our town centres, creating the anchor institutions needed. People want Scotland's towns to be more "experiential".
216: The Scottish Retail Consortium and Jennifer Hunter (Culture Counts) both emphasised the importance of considering not just a town's daytime offering, but also what could be offered in the evening. Comedy, music or cinema nights and book clubs were all suggested. Jennifer Hunter summarised "if you have a vibrant cultural place, it attracts more partnership projects, so it works both ways."
217: However, Ms Hunter called for closer working between BIDs (Business Improvement Districts) and the culture community and called for culture bodies, such as Creative Scotland, to be included as statutory consultees to ensure their inclusion from the outset. She emphasised: “If we are at the table, we can do a lot more to put forward what we can offer. The problem is that, quite often, we are not at any of the tables, which means that we are not able to bring forward our ideas for what could actually happen in a town.”
You can read the report in full here