High streets with boarded up shop fronts and lacking essentials such as butchers, grocers and bakeries will be given a multi-million-pound boost.
The £150 million cash injection will be targeted in areas hit hardest in recent years, and most in need of being brought back together.
Part of the government’s path to renewal, it will help turn the tide on this decline and restore a sense of pride people feel in their high streets and local area – which serves as a vital meeting point for communities.
Communities will bring people back into their local high streets by supporting local, independent businesses, improve neglected shopfronts and open up empty units. This will be the first step in the government’s upcoming High Streets Strategy, announced earlier this week.
It will build action already taken to restore pride in our communities, empowering councils in England to say no to new betting shops and vapes stores, supporting more than a thousand local pubs that offer extra services for communities and rejuvenating over 330 of the most deprived communities through our Pride in Place programme.
This is renewal in action, led by the people who know their neighbourhoods best, and backed by the government which is choosing unity over division.
Communities Secretary Steve Reed said: “Our high streets are the beating heart of Britain — where communities come together and local businesses can grow.
“Town centres have suffered from high streets falling into decline, and that is why we’re taking action to turn the tide with this crucial investment and more to come.
“We have listened to what people are telling us and that’s why we’re giving them the power and control to breathe new life back into our high streets and restore the sense of pride communities feel, building on our transformational Pride in Place programme.”
More details on the High Streets Strategy, including how funding will be allocated to specific places, will be announced in the coming months.
Other steps taken by the government to regenerate high streets include:
- Introducing a new community right to buy through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, giving local people greater power to save valued community assets like sports clubs and pubs.
- Ending ‘pub deserts’ by banning the loss of the last community facility in an area.
- Action to tackle the proliferation of betting shops on high streets.
