Southport’s MP has called for more Government investment into regenerating towns to stop them from being left behind by cities.
Patrick Hurley made his plea in Westminster as he said recent decades have seen a role reversal take place from flourishing towns and declining inner cities, to booming cities and towns across the UK which have seen better days – and need more support.
In a Parliament debate on Disadvantaged Communities Southport MP Patrick Hurley said: “When I was a child, my hometown was thriving, the high street was teeming and there were places to go and things to do. The British Insulated Callender’s Cables factory was at the top of my street, and employed perhaps 1,000 people.
“In contrast to my thriving hometown, the inner cities were in an awful state, with botched town planning, derelict street corners and subways that people did their best to avoid.
“If we fast forward 30 years, things have changed utterly. In my hometown, the factory closed and the workers were all made redundant. The factory site became a retail park and took trade away from the high street, leaving the town centre having seen better days. The youth clubs are gone. The library that helped me to learn to read has been demolished.
“Such places look depressed because they are depressed, but the cities are transformed. They are places of economic activity, cultural events and a huge amount of residential living. They are teeming with life.
“The domestic challenge is to bring up to that standard the hundreds of smaller conurbations that have seen better days—to work to reopen the youth clubs, to invest in our neighbourhoods and to bring back a sense of pride in place for the vast majority of our people.
“In too many places, there are obvious, visible manifestations of austerity, but the rot goes deeper than that. State investment has fled our towns, and street drinkers and rough sleepers have arrived.
“In my constituency, Southport, there is one youth club in a town of 85,000 people and there are too few places for people to go to socialise, whether they are 18 or 80.
“It falls on this governing party to do for our towns what previous Governments did for our cities.
“The British public are fair and they will give us a chance to put it right, but they will not give us too many chances. If we do not put it right, they will be unforgiving in their assessment of us.”
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