Our town centres are facing a challenging time. Besides the impact of online shopping on retailers, there is now great uncertainty about the future – partly caused by turmoil on world markets inspired by President Trump’s on-off tariffs, but also by the forthcoming budget here in the United Kingdom. Consumer confidence is not high.
Wokingham Borough Council adopted a Town Centre Strategy some months ago and has developed an action plan to help all our town and village centres – starting with Wokingham, Woodley, and Twyford – as they transition to a new kind of High Street. We want to support the remaining shops, but also the leisure, entertainment and hospitality businesses that are such an important part of modern town centres. We cannot stop the relentless rise of online purchasing, but we can help our town centres adapt to new conditions and continue to be vibrant and exciting places that people want to visit.
My executive colleague Mark Ashwell has been working with our officers in the business support team to develop our approach. We have recently appointed a town centre officer, with extensive experience of the hospitality industry and the local area, and he is already out and about engaging with our town centre businesses. We continue to run jobs fairs and advice sessions for start-ups. We want to work in partnership with businesses and other local interested parties to put on events in our town and village centres that will attract more people and increase footfall for local businesses.
There is broad agreement across the different parties on the council that we should do all we can to help our local businesses, especially in these difficult times. But we are not always in agreement about how best to help.
At last week’s council meeting, an opposition Conservative councillor proposed that we give an hour’s free parking in Wokingham town centre during the current road works.
This might sound like a good idea but a few moments reflection tells you that it would almost certainly prove an expensive error.
The proposal would cost the council an eye-watering £650,000 in lost revenue, which we can ill afford at a time when government is proposing to cut our funding very significantly. If we used more than £650,000 to subsidize car parking in just one town centre, we would undoubtedly have calls to roll out the same concession to other centres in the borough, which would increase the cost even more. The money lost would mean that we had to make savings elsewhere – on top of those big savings we already are going to have to make. We would be obliged to make deeply unpopular and unpalatable decisions to balance our books.
All this may be worth it if we could be confident that waiving the first hour’s parking charges would make a real difference. Our footfall data suggests that there has not been a drop in the number of people visiting Wokingham town centre and town centre car park usage remains high. There is no evidence that the sacrifice of more than £650,000 of much-needed council revenue would lead to more people using local shops and restaurants.
If there is no fall in the number of people in Wokingham town centre, why are some local businesses reporting a fall in takings? The answer, surely, is the consumer uncertainty that currently is afflicting businesses everywhere. Many people, not just in Wokingham town but across the country, are simply spending less.
We must all hope that this is a temporary phenomenon, but the council will continue to do all it can to encourage our local businesses in a way that truly helps them.
You, too, can help. Please support the shops and other businesses in your community at this challenging time – as they say, use them or lose them.
By Cllr Stephen Conway
