Committee for The Executive Office
OFFICIAL REPORT (Hansard)
High Street Task Force: NILGA; FSB; Hospitality Ulster; NIRC; Tourism NI; Retail NI; Scotland's Towns Partnership
3 March 2021 NORTHERN IRELAND ASSEMBLY
Committee for The Executive Office
High Street Task Force: NILGA; FSB; Hospitality Ulster; NIRC; Tourism NI; Retail NI; Scotland's Towns Partnership
3 March 2021
Members present for all or part of the proceedings: Mr Colin McGrath (Chairperson) Mr Doug Beattie (Deputy Chairperson) Ms Martina Anderson Mr Trevor Clarke Mr Trevor Lunn Mr George Robinson Mr Pat Sheehan Ms Emma Sheerin Mr Christopher Stalford
Witnesses: Mrs Suzanne Wylie Belfast City Council Mr Neil Hutcheson Federation of Small Businesses Mr Colin Neill Hospitality Ulster Mr Derek McCallan Northern Ireland Local Government Association Alderman Stephen Moutray Northern Ireland Local Government Association Mr Aodhán Connolly Northern Ireland Retail Consortium Mr Glyn Roberts Retail NI Mr Phil Prentice Scotland's Town Partnership Mr John McGrillen Tourism NI
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): I welcome Derek McCallan, chief executive officer of the Northern Ireland Local Government Association (NILGA); Alderman Stephen Moutray from Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council; and Suzanne Wylie, chief executive of Belfast City Council. I invite you to give us a short introduction, after which members will have an opportunity to ask questions.
Alderman Stephen Moutray (Northern Ireland Local Government Association): Thank you for the invitation; it is welcome and timely. Amongst other things, I chair NILGA's all-council economy group. As you know, Suzanne Wylie, who is here representing council chiefs, is chief executive officer of Belfast City Council. Derek McCallan, NILGA's chief executive, also has direct experience of town centre design and management here and in Scotland.
Today is a sprint, but transforming high streets is a marathon. The high street task force was widely welcomed when it was set up. NILGA joined it by invitation from the start, and we asked it to work smart, work fast and not to duplicate; we asked it to include villages and we asked it to bid for investment and to transfer that investment locally; and we said that it must have outcomes that are led
1 by local high-street partners and that it must embed high streets in the Assembly's Programme for Government.
It remains to be seen whether all of that will come to pass, but we welcome the initiative, which, if delivered through councils, will see things happening faster, better and more sustainably. We are aware that time is tight, Chairperson, so I will hand over to Suzanne.
Mrs Suzanne Wylie (Belfast City Council): Good afternoon, everybody; it is good to be here. I am sure that all the stakeholders whom you will listen to this afternoon are very much in favour of the high street task force. [Inaudible.] I guess that that is required because of all the various stakeholders who are involved.
Our high streets, whether in a village, a town centre or a city, were already struggling because of the huge strategic shift in retail. At local council level, with some of the stakeholders who are around the table today, we were already reimagining what our high streets in towns and city centres should look like and we were getting on with quite a lot of work on that.
We all know that it is a cross-cutting issue, and that is why the TEO Committee is so interested in it. It will need to stay cross-cutting if we are to solve some of the problems on which COVID has shone a spotlight. We all want the task force to move quickly and to succeed. However, to do that, we need to make sure that we have access to the mechanisms required for policy change, for investment in our towns and villages, and for delivery. We need clarity on how that will happen. I am happy to take questions on that.
This is real place-based recovery, and it will require a joined-up partnership between local councils, stakeholders, sectors, businesses and Departments. Without the vibrancy of high streets, we will struggle to get people to live and invest here or to create jobs or get tourists to visit. It also affects planning and transport policies and our cultural strategies and even the levelling-up agenda, which is happening and is being discussed now at Westminster.
The task force as it is set up now is very well placed to come up with the advice as to what needs to happen. There is enough expertise around the table to do that. The who and the how will be more of a challenge for us. That is something that we would like the TEO Committee to consider, and Derek will follow up on that. There are some things that we would like to highlight that need to be thought through. The task force has just had its first meeting, so it is very early days, but we do not want it to go into a huge process. We have set up some subgroups, which is the right thing to do, but clear time frames need to be set for the task force to report and to give an action plan as to what we think needs to happen. That has to be considered in the right way across the COVID task force and through Departments.
First, time frames need to be clear. Secondly, we need to be clear that we have the right links to influence policy change, whether planning policy or rates policy, and how we link to the required financial support, whether that is financial support to prop up businesses or to support regeneration, investment or housing investment, or the revitalisation funds that DFC rolled out in the first phase of COVID.
I will say again that we are not starting from scratch. A lot of work has been done, and just this week the Chancellor announced funds for high-street recovery. They are envisaged to prop up businesses and to work through a real partnership between central and local government. Clearly, that is what we would like to see. I will hand over to Derek now to complete the presentation.
Mr Derek McCallan (Northern Ireland Local Government Association): I have just a few sentences because I am very conscious of time. As Suzanne said, the impact is key, and the Programme for Government and the task force should adopt a policy of divest and devolve. What I mean by that is that, as we speak, the Chancellor is announcing a £5·8 billion high-street restart fund. That is a £170 million for Northern Ireland, and that should be distributed via councils as in the rest of the UK.
I am conscious of time, but, ultimately, we all know about the radical approach needed here where power and resources have to be locality-based. It is the only way to do the re-imaging and the transformation that Suzanne and Alderman Moutray referred to. We see a vision here where we are turning cities, towns and villages from areas where boundaries are overseen by public servants and regulators to economic systems with delivery teams in communities, and they include the partners who will speak to you later today — our business and community colleagues.
2 That may seem radical, but it is more of a cultural change and a "trust local talent" thing than anything overbearing. With your indulgence, Chair, Alderman Moutray will close our short comments now.
Alderman Moutray: As the Committee knows, good practice has been and will be harvested by many of those giving evidence today, including our councils. We know of many cities, such as Toronto, that are leading the way. Best practice can also be tailored if councils are given the legislative and fiscal tools to do so. If Commonwealth countries in Africa can develop a smart-villages approach to rural development, the 11 councils can competently tailor that with local partners to transform our high streets long after the task force has performed its role. Indeed, the high street task force should be task and finish while the high streets and those who use them must be infinite.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Thank you very much indeed for your presentation. I will pass over to members for questions.
Mr Sheehan: Thanks to the panel. It is good to talk to you again, Suzanne and Stephen, and I welcome Derek. I want to ask about future planning. Stephen made the point that this is a marathon not a sprint. We had been expecting multi-year Budgets as a result of NDNA, but that is not going to happen now. How will that affect future planning? How will Brexit affect the work of the high street task force?
Mr McCallan: I have written most of those down. Thanks for your welcome, Mr Sheehan. As for multi- year Budgets, it would be better if there was multi-annual budgeting. We would prefer, fiscally, as councils, to work on an electoral-term basis rather than a run to the line every March, but we do not have that. In our own mechanisms, we are asking for the national lobbying of the Treasury. In other words, for fiscal freedom of councils to look at the long term, but "we have got what we've got", if you will excuse that phrase, in planning finance. My colleagues, Alderman Moutray and Suzanne, may wish to expand on that point.
I am tempted to respond quickly, Mr Sheehan, to the question about EU exit. We are completing a barriers and opportunities report with a public service excellence body across the water, and we will be looking at that in great detail. Like so many things, with the EU exit and our removal of the COVID situation, there are as many uncertainties, but high streets need communities, and communities need high streets. Whatever the wider environment, we have to roll up our sleeves and passionately deliver reformed high streets. My colleagues may wish to amplify on that.
Mr Sheehan: Thank you, Derek.
Mrs Wylie: Hello, Pat. Multi-year budgeting would be a real advantage, but, so far, we have got through on annual budgets with investment across the region. We can continue to do that, although it will not be as impactful. However, the bigger challenge is making sure that investment is prioritised for revitalising our towns, cities and villages. It is seen as essential for recovery and for bringing back tourists, creating new jobs, for socialising and for the mixing of communities n those places. That is where we should have the centre of our social life and commerce. Remember that councils can co- invest and look at longer-term financing strategies through their borrowing powers. Through a proper partnership, we can have an impact and look to the long term. Hopefully, some day we will get multi- annual budgeting, as that is really important for us.
We are all going through issues with the Brexit trade deal and trying to find a way to solve them so that we can get goods to retailers and supply chains etc, but also looking at what competitive advantage we can have as a region and how we can bring in more investment as a result. It is very important that we do that.
Mr Sheehan: Thank you, Suzanne.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Were members wishing to seek clarification on any issue, or we can draw you back into the conversation at the end? If members are happy, we will ask for Neil Hutcheson, the head of policy from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) to be brought into the spotlight?
We will now pass over to Neil to give us a presentation.
3 Mr Neil Hutcheson (Federation of Small Businesses): Good afternoon, Chair, members and Assembly staff. On behalf of the Federation of Small Businesses, I thank you for the invitation. I will keep the scope tight and then invite questions.
The FSB has about 6,000 members in NI, many of whom are in the retail and hospitality sector — on the high street. However, many others sit in the wider high-street ecosystem and therefore, form an integral part of it, whether they are aware of it or not. For example, those in the wider supply chain and advice-based organisations or businesses. FSB always tries to remember that it is about people, regardless of how they interact with the ecosystem: people as business owners; people who work for a business; people who visit a business; people who live in a place; people who visit for longer; or, of course, those who might have a constituency office there. It always comes back to people.
Members will be aware that the Executive Office statement by junior Ministers was published on Wednesday 24 February and that the task force had met for the first time a day earlier. The statement reiterated the needs of the task force, which you will be aware of, the high-level terms of reference and the membership of the task force. Members will also know that there have been calls for a task force for some time. It is great that things are up and running, and the FSB is pleased to be a member. There are positive signs. It is clear that the joint chairs and secretariat wish to move swiftly. Even though, as referenced by the witness who has just spoken, the scale of the task is enormous and, in many ways, long term, there appears to be an appetite and mechanisms that will allow us to co-design interventions at pace, where required, given the current context.
The task force secretariat has carried out thorough engagement with task force groups across other nations. FSB also benefits from having teams across England, Scotland and Wales. We hope to draw on, and feed in, lessons from colleagues and to be positive, proactive members of the task force. As members will know, task force members have a responsibility to stick within the scope of the point at hand, to do their homework and help the secretariat to extract maximum value from the process. We feel that that point is often overlooked and can be the downfall of certain groups that come together. Of course, the FSB is a member of the new organisation, but we also have our own FSB high streets group, which is a mix of women and men running businesses in various sectors in different geographical areas and noting the rural/urban divide. They are all clearly linked to the ecosystem in some form.
Following the first meeting of the task force last week, we met our high streets group on Friday to discuss the Executive Office statement and to take soundings. Members had a number of positive recommendations, as you would expect, one of which sits firmly within the scope of this session. As others have said, businesses thrive when policy is done with them rather than to them. The task force chairs have clearly noted that the aim to ensure co-design is at the heart of the work programme.
However, when we examined the membership list, something came to the fore: there was a strong feeling among FSB members that more business owners should form part of the task force. I am not taking anything away from the business owner who is here today, or other representatives — myself included — but members felt that, considering the four work streams that Suzanne mentioned, it is likely that three of the subgroups would not have a business owner. Subgroups are where much of the detailed work will take place, so, on that basis, it seems reasonable that an additional three business owners could be added to the task force. That would help to ensure that there is an additional checking mechanism, that any geographical concerns are mitigated, and, crucially, that more female business owners can partake. That is often overlooked. That said, we will follow due process and make the suggestion at the next meeting to see whether other members agree.
To recap, it should be remembered that this is about people and the ways in which they interact with the high streets ecosystem. Task force members have a duty to engage within the scope, do their homework and ensure that the secretariat can extract maximum value from the process. Following discussions with our members, FSB will be proposing that we add three additional business owners to the task force membership, with a focus on female business owners, while noting geographical spread. Thank you for listening.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Thank you, Neil. I appreciate that. We will bring members back into Spotlight to see whether there are any questions. Given that so many other sectors are involved in the high street task force, you make a valid point that it is there to help businesses to survive, so their voice is critical.
Do you find that businesses, in general, are up for the sort of transformation that may be required on the high street? Historically, it has been retailed-focused, but that may not be the shape of the high
4 street in future. Do you find that the businesses are saying, "Yes, we accept that and are up for any changes necessary"?
Mr Hutcheson: There are a couple of points there. First, we are always blown away by the entrepreneurial spirit of business owners. That sounds obvious, but their ability to survive and to think in a different way from people like me is amazing. We get around the table and suddenly all these ideas come at you and you think, "Yes, I remember now why I talked to the members". It sounds so obvious, but there is just no substitute for it. So much of the time, they pick up on things much more quickly than I or my colleagues could because it is their bread and butter. During the COVID period, we saw that ingenuity and people coming up with ideas. It is just something that business owners do naturally.
When you say, "Are you up for the change and do you want to embrace it?", it depends on the type of business, how well they are doing, and how long they have been there. All the members whom we met on Friday were really pleased that the group is up and running; they are chomping at the bit to feed into it. Even though some of them do not realise that they are part of the high street, they are very keen to contribute.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): OK. Thank you for that.
Ms Anderson: I want to pick up on the comments about the comprehensive spending review. We all want more than a flat, one-year Budget, and I appreciate the views of NILGA and others. Like you, we also have what we have at Executive and Assembly level, because, unfortunately, that is what was given to us.
I want to reference city deal inclusive growth in the context of the high street task force. The city deal model in Derry is an exemplar, as is the regeneration of Strabane town centre and Foyle quay in Derry, and the other infrastructural developments taking place. Neil, you talked about the importance of co-design, and we were acutely aware of it when we did that process in Derry. It was a case of "Nothing about you without you". You have to consult and understand people's lived experience.
I have raised this before, but when we saw the composition of the task force, I was alarmed to see that there was nobody on it from Derry. Therefore I was glad to hear you talk about geographical spread. Businesses in Derry cannot be properly represented if everything is coming from Belfast. I have said that before and will keep saying it: the task force needs to be representative of all businesses across the North. That is crucial.
Will you give us a sense of how often you meet and how decisions will be taken? How will the engagement and co-design that you spoke about, even from your end, take place? I agree that it should not happen to you and that you need to be involved in the process. Will you give me a wee bit of understanding of that?
Mr Hutcheson: OK. Thank you, Ms Anderson. First, can I clarify something? Do you mean how often the task force will meet or were you referring to the FSB group of members?
Ms Anderson: It was how often the task force will meet and the compositional change that you talked about in the task force. I am keen to ensure that there is somebody on it from Derry.
Mr Hutcheson: OK. I believe that I can answer one of your three questions. I understand that the task force's subgroups are due to be signed off in the coming weeks. Initially, we believe that the task force should meet a little more regularly, perhaps once a month. After that, it may go to a quarterly pattern, with the subgroups meeting in between. That is as much as we know.
On the co-design process and everything else, there were really good soundings last week from the joint chairs and secretariat, but I have no further detail on that at the moment.
Ms Anderson: I also want to ask about the task force's involvement in the transition to a green economy. Do you know whether the task force will engage with the experts in the field [Inaudible] to ensure that sustainability is at the heart of it, particularly in the context of the high street task force and all the cities across the North? Is that detail that you have not yet touched upon? I am keen to hear about parklets. We know that they are popular and could transform cities and towns. Would you be keen to be involved in the conversations taking place about them?
5 Mr Hutcheson: A key indicator in the terms of reference is sustainability and green growth, so it is yes to that. As we have had only the first meeting, there is very limited knowledge on how that will interact, but I have no doubt that it will be key on the agenda.
Ms Anderson: Thank you.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): We welcome Colin Neill, chief executive of Hospitality Ulster.
Mr Colin Neill (Hospitality Ulster): Thank you, Chair and members, for the opportunity to engage. The length of time I have been speaking is more than the engagement than we have had on the road map from the Executive, which is a different story.
I do not mind sharing the spotlight with everybody else. For those who do not know us, Hospitality Ulster is the membership body for the hospitality industry. Our membership consists of pubs, bars, restaurants, coffee shops, combination providers, major tourist visitor attractions, and our two airports, but a huge part of our industry is on the high street. I use that term lightly, because that is in our villages, towns and cities. We are in every part of the country. If you go down a country road, you will find manufacturing, a shop and hospitality. It is the backbone of our economy.
The hospitality industry is the fourth largest private-sector employer in the Province. It sustains 72,000 jobs and 4,000 businesses. It buys one third of Northern Ireland's agri-food production and accounts for two thirds of visitor spend. As we see from changes around the world, hospitality and leisure will be key parts of the future of our high streets. There will always be a place for retail, but retail is changing, and hospitality will fill that role and create a destination place. Our high streets have to have social cohesion; they will have to be a place to meet and greet and interact.
We welcome the task force. As a town-centre manager for years and head of economic development for a local authority, I was hugely connected to our service partners in my previous life. I have not yet had a chance to feed back to the high street task force, as it has had only one meeting, so forgive me if I am telling you something that I am waiting to tell them at the next meeting. As I say, I welcome the task force, but I have huge concerns about its structures and the way it is set up.
We have a board of 30-plus people already. I was on the reference group, and the suggestion was that the board should be made up of people with skills and knowledge, not representatives. When you switch to representatives, you get into that situation of needing representatives from every geographical point and for every type of person who uses the high street. Where do you stop? As I am sure that you know from engagement, trying to get decisions with a 30-strong board will be difficult. Moreover, the subgroups were done to us; we had no choice or input on them. We were just told, "These are what the subgroups are going to be". If the task force is going to have a say, it should, one, have a governing board and, two, decide what the actual subgroups are, not just be told what is going to be done to us.
Compare us to the GB task force: it is a board of fewer than 10 people with 150 advisers. That allows you to tap in and do stuff. The task force will have to be radical. It cannot be more of the same. It needs to provide leadership and advocacy, and it needs to be involved in the COVID recovery as well. It cannot sit there waiting. It needs to be action-driven. We have all been involved in lots of well- meaning talking shops as, I am sure, have Committee members. I totally respect well-meaning talking shops, but we do not have time for this. The clock is ticking for our high streets. It must be action- driven.
It also has to be a vehicle to help and empower local authorities and work closely with them to make sure that they are able to move ahead — sometimes under the Executive — on their own and to help them get the funding that they need. This has to be a partnership. It cannot just be a consultative role to the Executive and that is it. Otherwise, we would be better doing something else.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Thank you, Colin. I appreciate, as ever, your honesty about the issues. In a moment, I will bring Trevor in, but I have two quick questions for clarification. Did you say that the GB model has 10 members and loads and loads of advisers and that we are at 30 members here?
Mr Neill: GB has a board of, I think, 10 or 11 — it is below 12 — but it has 150 advisers. Under our current model, the private sector members are outnumbered by government officials by about two to one. Therefore, it will be what the government officials decide. It will not be what we want.
6 The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): I specifically said to the First Minister during Question Time that the high street task force needs to sit somewhat separate to the COVID recovery but that there will be areas where they cut across and join. The high street was declining before COVID. COVID will, hopefully, disappear quickly, but we will still have the same decline in the high street. There is no point in doing high street recovery without COVID recovery, and there is no point in doing COVID recovery without the other. Are you saying that there has been little interaction between those two strands to date?
Mr Neill: We have had only one meeting of the 30-strong board, and that was more about being told what the committees are, what the terms of reference are and who the members are. It will not meet every month. It will be the subgroups. As you have seen, I do not see how the subgroups are dealing with COVID. In the world that we are in, I would be looking to engage every week. Things are moving fast. Not to beat the drum, but the recovery plan would have been much better with discussions and input before it was launched. I appreciate that it is about working with a five-party coalition, and the feedback will be, "We have to get agreement from the five-party coalition first". However, would it not be much better to have the stakeholders involved, not to tell government what to do or to have the control but to explain the unintended consequences of actions and suggest things that can be done? You will end up with, as we got, someone saying, "Here is a road map", and all the trade bodies will be lobbying against it — or for it, depending on their take — rather than having bought into it in partnership.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Valid points.
Mr Lunn: Hello, Colin. It is good to see you again. I am glad to hear that you are being so forthright about the size and structure of the new body, because I always find that these bodies start off small and then expand until they are far too big. This one seems to be starting off far too big, so we will see where it goes, but we have to work with it.
I want to ask you a specific question, Colin, about the best use of money when the money starts to come through. Where do you think business improvement districts (BIDs) fit in the overall scenario? Do you think that that is money well spent, or do you think that it is a waste of money?
Mr Neill: Business improvement districts have a valuable role. Indeed, back in the day when I was a town centre manager, I actually brought in the first voluntary business improvement district, in the Ballymena area, on that model. Again, like everything, it depends whether it is a good one. There are good ones and bad ones. When you have them touching boundaries, there is a challenge to get them to work collectively and not compete in areas. However, there is a role for them. Obviously, the businesses in the area have the vote and the voice. Sometimes, that can be tapered by the fact that if your BID is in an area where there are a lot of local government buildings and they have a big rateable value, they can be told to vote in a certain way, you know? I think that, in the round, they are good and have an important role to play.
Mr Lunn: Colin, do you think that, in the present circumstances — the straitened, terrible times that we are in at the moment — businesses will be as prepared to stump up their contributions as they might have been in the past?
Mr Neill: It is not so much about whether they are prepared to but whether they can afford to. Look at the hospitality sector. The Office for National Statistics — this is not me making up stuff; it is from the UK Government's national statistics body — says that two fifths of businesses do not have enough cash to get them to the end of May. They will not have enough cash to open. Indeed, there is debt right down the supply line. Look at the front end — we have members in the food-service and beverage supply line, so we can see it — the retail end does not have the money to pay the debt that they owe from previous openings, so they are using cash only, and they have no cash. The suppliers do not have the money to pay the producers, so they are owed. There will need to be an injection of cash right down the system.
As regards asking for contributions, particularly large amounts, the fact is that hospitality works on an awfully tight margin. We are not like non-essential retail. I appreciate that it has suffered. However, it will open with hand sanitising and masks. We will open with severely reduced numbers. Indeed, when you model social distancing, and so on, you see that we may be working at 12·5% occupancy. Our margins will not be there even to make a sustainable financial level, never mind a profit. The challenge will be whether they have the money to pay it.
7 Mr Lunn: Thank you very much.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Thank you very much, Colin. I think that we need to follow up a couple of key points in there. We appreciate you answering Trevor's question.
Could we ask for Aodhán Connolly to be brought in? He is director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium (NIRC). Maybe we could get some views from you, Aodhán, on the high street task force.
Mr Aodhán Connolly (Northern Ireland Retail Consortium): It is always difficult to follow Colin Neill, because he covers everything. Thanks for the opportunity. It is great to see you all again.
By way of background, the high street was changing long before COVID. There had been more change during the five years before COVID than there had been in the previous 50, and there has been change since. All that COVID has done is accelerate that change. For example, some retailers are doing deliveries and online stuff now that they thought that they would be doing in eight or 10 years from now. The debate that we are having about how the high street looks in the 21st century is something that I have actually been working on for almost 10 years, since we published our '21st Century High Streets' paper. We wanted to have a long-term vision for where we wanted to be.
The high street task force has managed to bring together many enthusiastic and knowledgeable people, but it is still a lot of people. Colin mentioned that retail is going to contract. We have been saying that for 10 years. Retail will contract, quite simply because of how people engage with the retail industry and how we use our space. The big question is this: what happens then? For us, there is a real need to look at towns, cities and villages as destinations. The big principle in this is how to get people to spend their time, not just their money. That is a big difference.
What needs to happen with the high street is that it needs to have more hospitality and leisure. We do not have very much leisure in any of the high streets. We also need to look at living over the shops and living in town centres, something that we have not historically done or been able to do here in Northern Ireland. Even places like Falkirk have done a lot of work on that. It provides new communities, but that also needs infrastructure and it needs capital grants for changing of land usage. It also needs things like schools, health centres and green space.
It is a big ask, and that is one of the reasons why we are putting faith in the high street task force. One of the things that we are particularly bad at in Northern Ireland is long-term planning. We will plan for an election cycle, we will plan for five years and we will do yearly budgets. We have been saying for many years that we need to plan for 10, 20 and 30 years. Again, it is about that destination. How do we make our high streets somewhere where people want to work, to spend time and to live?
I completely take the point that Martina made earlier, that this needs to be done across the North. Although I live in Belfast, I am originally from west of the Bann. If it were a normal year, I would be north, south, east and west in Northern Ireland every week. That brings me to a really important point and to something that cannot be lost in the task force. Every part of Northern Ireland has its own particular flavour and its own particular strengths, and we cannot look at this as one shoe fitting all. Strides have already been made. For example, what Derry and Strabane District Council has done with Halloween is a huge selling point, but it needs to look at how to widen that out over the whole year. Newry has a wonderful canal structure by the town hall. Why is that not being used as cafe culture for the summer period with pedestrianisation? Bangor has huge potential. It is one of the few place that has leisure. It has good hospitality, with great restaurants and pubs, but we need to get people to come back to that high street rather than going elsewhere. Armagh has its Georgian heritage. There are plenty of examples of potential. We need to turn that potential into a working, marketable solution and plan that works not only for the people who visit but for the people who live there.
We also need to look at places outside of these islands. We need to learn from places such as Berlin, Aarhus, Gothenburg and Lille, where this sort of regeneration has been done. Their regeneration has been about people as much as it has been about place. There are lots of places where regeneration has worked and has then become cyclical. We have seen that in Belfast city centre, where we had Castle Court and then Victoria Square and we are now waiting to see where the next one is going to be. What we should be doing is looking at how we bring and keep people together rather than one area goes up and one goes down.
Finally, there is a need for leadership and for advocacy, but, most of all, there is a need for delivery. What that delivery will be remains to be seen. We do have some good people leading it, but we need
8 some short-term, some medium-term and some long-term objectives. We need some immediate deliverables. There are two things that we need to come from the task force. There are those deliverables that have a tangible effect, and that can be used local councils, through the business improvement districts (BIDs) that have been talked about, to actually make a difference. Perhaps just as importantly, we need to explain to the Executive and to the Departments that the decisions that they make do not happen in a vacuum. For us to be able to do that and to show how the decisions will actually affect high streets across Northern Ireland will be hugely important.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Thanks very much for that, Aodhán. You raise a valid point. I do not think that there is an answer to this; it is maybe just a problem that often happens. I have noticed that, in my area, as soon as something opens up — whatever type of product is being sold or whatever type of shop it is — it seems that, suddenly, you see three of them. Then, all of a sudden, all three cannot survive, and all three have to close. Is there any way that people can help to shape areas, so that the businesses that open are given that chance to survive? As soon as somebody has a good idea, three others come out and try to do it. I ask this especially as people have pointed out that this high street task force is as much about villages and small towns as big cities. How do you manage a problem like that?
Mr Connolly: It depends how you look around the world. Some countries, especially the Nordic countries, have impact assessments, that are done in the same way that we would do retail impact assessments or economic impact assessments for large planning decisions. In the United States, they have it on a state and local city level, for zoning, so that you have a hospitality zone, or a certain amount of hospitality within each zone. That is hard to do in a village setting. However, one of the things we saw after the 2007-08 recession is that you suddenly had lots of coffee shops and charity shops. That helped in the short term, but it is not a long-term answer to what the high street needs.
I go back to the point that retail is contracting and will continue to do so. We need a vision, and it needs to be set out for each town, village and whatever. It needs to be tailored to what they need. If they are going to promote living over the shops, and town-centre living, they need to set out green space, and space for amenities, doctors' practices, schools and that sort of thing. It should be a decision made at a sufficiently local level so as not to lose the flavour of the town and not to let it become a clone. At the same time, local councils will need to have those regeneration powers to do what is needed for those local areas.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Thank you for that, Aodhán.
If we are happy enough and members have no other questions, we can move on. I thank Aodhán for that.
I welcome John McGrillen, the chief executive of Tourism NI. You are very welcome. Would you like to give us your introduction?
Mr John McGrillen (Tourism NI): Thank you very much for the invitation to contribute this afternoon. I am going to approach this from a couple of perspectives. I am chief executive of Tourism NI, obviously, but I also spent 16 years in local government. For five of those, I was director of development for Belfast City Council. Like yourself, Colin, I am a relic of the old Down District Council of a few years ago.
The vibrancy of city, town and village centres are incredibly important from the point of view of tourism. Similarly, tourism makes a significant contribution to the future health of towns and cities. Colin Neill made the point earlier about the importance of the hospitality sector to town and city centres. Of the figures that Colin referred to, tourists spend £1 billion of that money, and £750 million of that, spent in those town and city hospitality establishments in 2019, came from outside Northern Ireland. That is a very significant sum of money, which is brought into the region and spent here. Some 40% of that was spent in Belfast, principally in the city centre, and the remainder in towns and villages across the whole of Northern Ireland.
Aodhán Connolly made the point, quite correctly, that retail has been on a downward journey for a significant period, and that has been accelerated by COVID. COVID has had a different impact on the tourism sector. What we have seen is a shock, but all the research suggests that there is still a very significant desire to travel, both locally and internationally. All of the research that has been done, across the globe and by ourselves, suggests that the tourism industry can bounce back really quickly. Our expectation is that in 2023 we will be back to about 80% of where we were in 2019, and by 2024-
9 25, we will be back to being [Inaudible] much more than a £1 billion industry. Tourists, people who are staying overnight in a location, will be spending over £1 billion in those places where they stay.
As we move forward, all of the indications are that people are going to be more likely to visit smaller walkable cities than large metropolises. People do not want to be where places are crowded so we are less likely to see people want to go to places like Venice and Barcelona, and we are more likely to see people want to go to smaller cities that are walkable and green. Health and well-being is going to be a really big factor for people when they go on holiday in the future, so, again, they are more likely to stay in rural towns and villages. Given the landscape that we have and the selection of towns, villages and cities, and the very different natures of them, I think that we are very well placed to maximise the opportunity that the global tourism industry can deliver. In my view, tourism and the tourists can play a significant role in contributing to the vibrancy of the town centres as we go forward.
I very much agree with what Aodhán said about the importance of the individuality of each of these places and about each of them being a unique destination. People want to come here, and then they want to have authentic experiences, to engage with local people, to understand the local history of the place that they are in and they want to hear the stories that are being told.
Every tourism authority in the world is looking towards building back tourism in a regenerative way. What does that mean? It means being less focused on visitor numbers and being much more focused on job creation and enhancing, improving the built and natural environment and supporting sustainable communities in those places. Therefore, there really is a symbiotic relationship between the tourist in helping to sustain attractive town centres and bringing the benefits. However, for that to happen and to get the tourists there, the towns, city centres and villages have to be attractive in their own right. Therefore, we need to look at how these things collectively work together.
If we look at the people who come to Northern Ireland as visitors, 70% of them come here to explore our culture and heritage. They want to explore the most authentic experiences and, as I said, to engage with local people and to enjoy local food and drink. What we need to do here, again, as Aodhán said, is to look at those individual places, look at their strengths and look to see how we build on those and how to make them attractive to the tourists as they come forward.
People are undoubtedly going to want to see city and town centres that are much greener, cleaner, and that have a really strong local hospitality offer and which have a vibrant night-time economy. People want to come and they want to stay in places that are vibrant, where there are good restaurants and places where they can go and have a beer and engage with local people. Therefore, they have to be great places to stay, and if we want to make sure that when people come here, they do not just come to Belfast and head off back to Dublin, then we want to make sure that we have places that have that vibrancy and those vibrant night-time economies to make sure that we can get people to stay, to spend their money and to contribute to the economic well-being of those local areas.
As I said, tourists are very keen to explore our culture and heritage. I think that one of the things that we need to do is to give much more support to our cultural venues, to make sure that we have good programming and great events, and make sure that we have marketplaces for people to visit. I think that we sometimes underinvest in those things. Certainly, if one looks at the investment that goes into the cultural sector here in comparison to other places, then it is much less. There has been a huge divestment in support for a lot of our cultural and built heritage assets over the last numbers of years, and I think that we need to look at that.
With regard to retail, the tourist does not want to see every high street look the same. They are really keen to see independent retailers that are selling local produce. As Aodhán said, they want the town to look distinctive, and our towns should not be cloned. I think that we have spent too much time in the past as far as regeneration projects go in town centres, and every town has the same street lighting, furniture and paving. We need to make our places look distinctive; they need to be rooted in their heritage and history and that of the people who live in them.
We need to cluster services so that they are self-sustaining are can work collectively. You cannot go out and do your own thing in the tourism industry. A hotel in a town is dependent on the restaurants and the visitor attractions there. Everybody needs to cluster and work together for collective benefit and mutual benefit.
We have a significant role to play. I agree very strongly with what Aodhán said: there are other places that have done this really well, and we do not have to reinvent the wheel. Detroit, which is an example that he did not mention, was on its knees 10 years ago, and it has completely reinvented itself as a
10 city centre that is built on its culture and heritage and has developed a tourism product in what was very much an industrialised city.
Colin Neill made the point about talent, and we need to get the very best people to help us with this process. When I was the regeneration director in Belfast City Council, I went to Manchester with Peter McNaney, who was the chief executive, and we said, "You have done this really well. How do we go about doing this?". They said, "Don't ask us. Go to Toronto if you want to find somebody who will really help you define what your quality is". So, we need to get the best talent to support us in doing this.
There are some really useful things happening that we can lean upon and build on. Martina mentioned city deals, and there is a number of significant tourism-led regeneration projects as part of those, which will have a really positive impact on town centres, including Belfast, Derry and other places. Close to home, there are some really good examples of where we have done that well, such as Newcastle, which you will be familiar with, Chair, and what has happened in the Cathedral Quarter. The Titanic Quarter is a fantastic example of a tourism-led regeneration project; the big investment in Titanic Belfast has driven the growth of all the other sectors that are starting to thrive down there. There are examples at home that we can look towards.
There was a regional development strategy drawn up close to 20 years ago, which set out, let us say, the hierarchy of place in Northern Ireland. That was developed in the times that were then, and things have changed dramatically since. Coming back to the point that Aodhán made about the distinctiveness of place, places cannot be the same and perform the same functions. Tourists will not go to every town, they will go to some; inward investment will not go to every town, it will go to some. I am not even sure that people are familiar with the fact that that regional development strategy still exists, but it needs to be revisited in light of how we start to restructure the region.
I heard the comments about the number of people who are on the task force, and those are valid, but there should be a tourism representative on it. I do not mean myself; I mean somebody from the industry who really understands it and understands the dynamic of it and the benefit that it brings.
In terms of the vision, the word "visit" is not reflected in it. Places do not only need to be good places to live and to do business; they should also be good places to learn in and to visit. I would like to see the vision reflect the importance of the visitor, because that will be much more important. We need to use our town centres to provide leisure provision, as Aodhán said, and start to look at how we can meet the needs of the tourists of the future, encourage them to stay in our towns, spend their money there and contribute to sustainable communities and sustainable town centres.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): OK, John. Thank you for that presentation, which went significantly uphill after you referred to me as a "relic", which I —.
Mr McGrillen: [Inaudible] relic than you, I have to say.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): We will forgive that. A couple of members are looking to come in. We spoke about this before, but it is a really important point: will COVID have had an impact on the type of visitor that will be coming? People may be less prepared to engage in overseas travel for two or three weeks at a time, which may impact on the American model. Maybe we should look at more local tourism in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. You made a point about investing in culture, festivals and events. Those are things that people may go back to again rather than going to a massive building, which, when they have been round it once, they may not go back to again. Will COVID have some impact there?
Mr McGrillen: The impact of COVID will be that, in the future, the tourist will look for somewhat different. They will be much more focused on sustainability, health and well-being, engagement with the local community and having an authentic experience. All the trends were heading in that direction before COVID. If anything, COVID has probably accelerated that and made people much more aware of those issues.
In considering where people might come from, we will be looking at a market that is close to home first. Seventy-four per cent of our spend in 2019 came from the UK and Ireland, and there is potential for growth beyond that. I will not say that we will not see the Americans and Europeans come back; I think that we absolutely will, and there is potential for the industry to grow. Our focus moving forward will be not about visitor numbers but about value, spend and the contribution that it makes to
11 communities. We should not worry so much about the tourist issue. Tourism does not form a purpose if it does not make a positive contribution to the places the visitors are going to. In recent years, places like Venice and Barcelona identified that, and when residents started to feel that tourism was no longer a benefit, there was a kickback. We are a long way from that. However, going forward, our focus needs to be on how we can make tourism contribute to those things, not least the vibrancy and sustainability of our town centres and the built heritage and cultural assets in them.
Mr Lunn: Thanks, John, for all that. You made a very valid point about the link between tourism and the vibrancy of town centres. It is obvious that one feeds off the other. We can offer tourists an experience that equals or is perhaps better than anything else on these islands but that has been underused so far. My question is perhaps not for the task force, but it is related to it. Are you satisfied with the efforts that are made in, for example, the Republic to encourage all-Ireland tourism and to get people to come up here as well as to go to Dublin? The same applies to Britain and Scotland.
Mr McGrillen: Is the question about getting people who go to the Republic to come here or people who come to the island of Ireland to travel around the island?
Mr Lunn: It is both, John. I understood that Tourism Ireland and Tourism NI are closely aligned. You said that 74% of our visitors come from the Republic of Ireland and the UK, and that is a very high figure, but it might not be a very high number. Are you satisfied with the cooperation that happens?
Mr McGrillen: I am. We work very closely and well with Tourism Ireland. Part of our challenge in getting people from further afield to come to Northern Ireland is the fact that the connectivity in the first instance is very much in Dublin. We do not have any direct routes to North America; we have very few direct routes into Europe. If we are going to get those visitors, we have to work with people in the Republic to make sure that we have Northern Ireland programmed as a part of their overall offer. We work very closely with the Incoming Tour Operators Association (ITOA), which is pretty much ROI based, but it brings a significant number of people across the border. Part of our challenge is to make sure that the places we have are attractive places for people to stay overnight. There has to be somewhere for a coach to park, something for people to do when they go out at night, somewhere to eat, a bar to go to and music to be heard. We are a little bit limited, if I am honest. Belfast has that, and Derry also has it but to a lesser extent. However, beyond Belfast and Derry, it is very hard to find places that meet those needs. Certain towns, although not every one, have potential to be tourism hubs, and as we move forward with this exercise we have to identify those towns and use and build on that potential as a means to encourage people to stay longer, spend more, contribute more and create more jobs.
Mr Stalford: Hello there, John. It is good to see you again. I think that we can all agree that all that you achieved when you were the director of Belfast council was because you had an excellent chairman in the development committee. I do not know who that fella was.
You mentioned the development of town centres. Obviously, as I come from Belfast, that is something that is important to me. I remember very clearly when the Waterfront Hall first opened. What was previously an old cattle yard became a positive feature of the city. Over time, however, the area around the Waterfront Hall became overdeveloped to the point where Oxford Street, for example, is simply a mass of glass and steel. One of the things that Belfast needs, frankly, like a hole in the head is more glass and steel structures. When buildings are built with a lifespan in mind, they become disposable, whereas if buildings are built with a view to lasting forever, they become genuinely beautiful. What role do you think the Planning Service has in ensuring the sensible development of town centres? Newcastle is a good example of somewhere that has been modernised and brought up to date but where that has worked in a positive way, whereas I can think of examples around the city of Belfast where, frankly, it has not worked. Will you talk about the role that planning has in preserving the integrity of towns and city centres so that they do not simply become carbon copies of everywhere and you could be in any city in the world because everything just looks the same?
Mr McGrillen: I am not sure that I am the best person to comment on that, Christopher, given that I looked after the extension to the Waterfront Hall. You make a very valid point. From a tourism perspective, built heritage is incredibly important in making the place attractive. If you go around Lisbon, you will find that it is very hard to find a new building; they have repurposed old buildings in a way that means that, even for living accommodation, the attractiveness of the place remains. Vibrancy comes with that, which makes it attractive. You get yourself in to a virtual circle that benefits everybody. Planning is critical.
12 There are websites on Facebook or whatever that have old images of Belfast 100 years ago. The saddest thing is that, in many ways, it was a much more attractive city 100 years ago than it is today. We need to protect the built environment that we currently have and repurpose and reuse it in a positive way that is attractive to not just tourists but people who live there and utilise the city centres.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Thank you, John. I appreciate that input and those answers.
We are going to move on quickly, because, as ever, we are running behind time. Glyn Roberts is the chief executive of Retail NI. We will hand over to you, Glyn, to give us a few minutes of input, and then members wishing to ask questions will indicate and I will bring them in.
Mr Glyn Roberts (Retail NI): Chair, thank you very much for the opportunity. I do not want to cover a lot of what my colleagues already covered about the importance of 21st century town centres being ecosystems of lots of different types of businesses that are green and very different from the model that we had before. I will try to cover where we see the task force going, what it needs to do and where it feeds in to the wider recovery efforts.
Retail NI has been calling for a high street task force for the best part of 10 years. In fact, we were calling for that a long time before the pandemic. The reason, very simply, was that responsibility for our town centres and high streets was scattered across a number of Departments. We wanted to get the Executive on the one page to coordinate things like rates, planning, regeneration, car parking, infrastructure and investment to make sure all those things are pushing in the one direction for a coherent plan to create 21st century high streets. The task force role, even though it is early days, is ultimately about the medium- to long-term challenges facing our high streets. It is right to have that long-term thinking because, quite often, we get sucked into Assembly life cycles or Programme for Government life cycles, so it is important to have some long-term thinking.
I was a member of the original reference group that set up the task force. We were very much saying that the task force needs to be a partnership of Departments, businesses and other civic groups so that we can co-design solutions. I was concerned that business groups would be shunted off into some advisory role and that we would be summoned now and again to be told what is happening, but we are there in equal partnership. That is what there needs to be: a proper partnership, in every sense of the word, between key Departments, councils, businesses, trade unions and other players in civic society. I was reasonably confident about the first official meeting of the task force. It is certainly a lot bigger than we originally envisaged.
Ultimately, the task force will be judged not on its membership but on what it delivers. That is what people will say. I hope that it is not another talking shop. I hope that it is very much seen alongside the wider Executive efforts to recover post-pandemic and, indeed, to create a very new vision for our economy as a whole. I am encouraged; I thought that the first meeting went well.
Perhaps we have a more immediate challenge. Originally, the reference group that created the task force suggested that there should be a COVID-19 recovery group or subgroup within it. That has been subdivided to the COVID-19 recovery group that the Executive Office is leading on. There is where we have a difficulty. Like most business groups, we were not particularly impressed with the pathway report that came out yesterday. One thing amongst a lot of things that was missing is what actually happens when coordinating the approach to getting our high streets ready for reopening. Assuming that, hopefully, non-essential retail is ready to go after Easter, why has there been no preparation for things like COVID marshals, public hand-sanitising units, COVID-compliant signage and all those things that are vital not just to create confidence in consumers as they return to our high streets but to ensure that external elements in our high streets and town centres are playing their role to reduce the levels of transmission of the virus? We suggested in discussions with Executive Office officials this very morning that a very short-term group needs to be set up to coordinate with councils and Departments to make sure that, over the next few weeks and months, our high streets and town centres are ready for reopening. That planning can begin now; we do not need to wait until 16 March. Preparation for that can begin now so that we can hit the ground running. The role of the Executive in this is ensuring that a framework is in place that councils, businesses and other organisations can use to ensure common standards across the 11 council areas.
When we reopened in December, I observed that there was no uniformity or coordination across the council areas. Some town centres were better organised than others. We need to have that framework in place. That is an immediate thing that needs to happen in a matter of days. It needs to be set up now to make sure that we can hit the ground running when, hopefully, the Executive give us the green light to reopen non-essential retail in the near future.
13 The long-term situation will be about tackling the age-old challenges of business rates. We have not solved business rates. We have a very welcome rate holiday, but we need fundamental restructuring of our business rate system and our planning system so that they are tightened up. Out-of-town retail developments are still getting through and being allowed by councils. That is something that the Minister for Infrastructure can look at.
How do we make sure that our rural towns are looked after? We suggested to Infrastructure that we need a rural town infrastructure development fund. How do we develop the concept of localism? That is not just about supporting independent retailers; it is about changing the leadership model in our local high streets and town centres. We have suggested that we have a localism on steroids.
Finally, there seems to be this common narrative that the one thing that we will need less of in 21st century high streets is retail. What we need is a different type of retail. We do not need any more big multiples. What we need is the next generation of independent retailers that will really make a difference and add something different to our high streets. They will be the driving force and at the cutting edge of not just a new vision for our high streets but of a very different retail sector that is based more on indigenous, local, family-owned companies that offer something different.
You will have heard a lot of wonderful jargon about co-decisions and the like when we talk about high streets. Ultimately, what is the definition of success for our high street? It is something that is fun and family-friendly that people will want to come back to time and time again. If we can create that, we will have moved forward. Thank you for your time.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Thanks very much for that, Glyn. I appreciate that.
Mr Clarke: It is good to see you, Glyn. It struck a chord with me when you and other witnesses were speaking. Like you, we all want the task force, and I fully accept that you are one of the people who has been calling for it; I have heard you calling for it many times. I think that it would be a good thing whether COVID happened or not. It is a good idea for Northern Ireland to try to find a way forward to fix some of our failing streets.
Do not take offence at this, but I was listening to Colin and others, and there is a perception that you will be in there just fighting for your membership and not necessarily for the vision. I am trying to paraphrase what Colin said. He did not attack elected representatives, but he did say that there was no point in having public representatives on a task force. I have to agree with you all that there is no place for loading it with officials. On the one hand, that was said, and, on the other hand, I am thinking that if we do not have public representatives who represent an opinion, we will have representative bodies who will represent the view of their paid membership. Do you see a conflict there, Glyn?
Mr Roberts: No, I do not. There are so many players now in the high street. It is not just retail and hospitality that are there; some of the big education establishments are on the high street, whether they are FE colleges or universities. It is also about making our town centres living communities. It is about all those things and getting that mix right. That may require a bigger range of players. Ultimately, it is not about who is on the task force; it is about what they will deliver. That is the key thing.
We have literally a year left in this Assembly, and I think that the real opportunities to shape will come in the next Programme for Government at the start of the 2022 Assembly term, when the Assembly, hopefully, will have a full four- or five-year run. That is where I see the task force in policy terms having the most impact. I see it not just as this little niche body but as a mainstream part of the Executive's post-pandemic recovery process. It will have to play that crucial central role in that process. Our town centres are key economic drivers for our economy, and, as I said at the start, I want them to be ecosystems for lots of different types of businesses. I want to see the next generation of retail entrepreneurs. I want to find them a home in our town and city centres. Things are moving very fast now. We do not quite know what the post-pandemic high street will be like, but it will be very different. It will certainly be cleaner and greener. There will be many more opportunities for public transport and for walking. At the same, we need to ensure that we have the traditional things like, for example, competitive and affordable parking. There are a lot of players around the table, and it is about how we pull them together and get a strategy that ultimately delivers.
Mr Clarke: That is the key, Glyn. I agree with a lot of what you just said about how to pull them together. My colleague Stephen Moutray is on this call. It takes me back to the 1970s, when I was hardly more than born, when the then Government invented Craigavon, which, as a dream, did not
14 really work. In my mind, I tie that to what Aodhán said today. We will not fix this in 12 months or 18 months. We need a vision, and I agree with the points that Aodhán made in his presentation.
I accept what you say, but I have reservations about the representative part whereby you hold a membership role. I know that you have been strongly against much of the out-of-town development, which, in my opinion, has always had a part to play. However, I agree that such developments have led to the destruction of some of our high streets. There is a balance to be struck. Reference has been made to examples in other countries across Europe, and there are examples of very good, successful out-of-town developments in mainland England. I think that we need a mixture. We have not done it very well in Northern Ireland, because we have tried to do too many in too many different places. For that reason, I support you, because, in many cases, those developments have led to the destruction of the high street.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Thank you for that, Trevor, and thank you, Glyn. We will move on to see whether we can encompass more rounded rather than specific comments. We will bring in Phil Prentice, who is the chief officer of Scotland's Towns Partnership (STP). The reason for inviting Phil to give an input today is that there is no point in reinventing the wheel. If other places have undergone the transformation or process that we want the high street task force to deliver, it certainly makes sense to speak to the people who have been involved. We know, Phil, that you have experiences of processes in other places as well.
You are very welcome to the Committee today. Thank you for taking the time to join us. I will pass over to you to speak for a few minutes about your experiences, and then we will open it up to members for questions.
Mr Phil Prentice (Scotland's Towns Partnership): Thanks very much. It is great to hear the accent. I have been away for 29 years, but I feel as though I have just landed back home again. I am the wee Northern Irish guy who does this for Scotland's towns.
Scotland's Towns Partnership was created post-financial crash, so there was a different crisis at that time. There was a recognition that Scotland was very much a nation of towns. A lot of its population was not city-centric. We have a couple of cities, Edinburgh and Glasgow, both of which are very small. We have a couple of pretend cities: Aberdeen and Dundee. We also have three cities that, to be honest, are just big towns: Inverness, Perth and Stirling.
By and large, 70% of Scotland's population lives not in cities but in towns, rural settlements, villages or on an island. That is why the Scottish Government started to think, "What do we do about our towns?" Bluntly, we had been hollowing them out for about 30 years. We built in far too much retail, and then, as people started to move online, to the edge of town or to retail destinations, the towns lost their sense of purpose. The cities, to a certain extent, drained their hinterland towns. Rather than irrigating them, they drained all the economic activity, because all the big investments went to the city. Then, bang, we came down with COVID, which resulted in that starting to reverse, and we have seen a big renaissance across towns because of more blended work patterns and less commuting etc.
We took a very holistic approach and decided not to set up a talking shop. We just said, "Look, the last thing that a country like Scotland needs is another public-sector agency running around the place squeaking at people, telling them what to do and becoming all bureaucratic and driven by admin". What you need is a disruptor. I spoke to the Cabinet Secretary at the time, Derek Mackay, who has also been the Minister for Local Government, and said, "Look, I am heading up economic development and regeneration in the local government sector. I know how to do this. I come from a private sector background. I know what needs to be done. Let us just set up a very small body with a representative board but become operational. Let us just get things done".
That is where STP moved in. We just became a disruptor, a collaborative body that pulls together the disparate sectors: institutional investments, developers, national retail, local retail, housebuilders, energy, digital, culture, tourism — the whole shebang. We built the data model. We have a typology for all our towns. You have a witness from Tourism NI, but not every town is going to become a tourist town. We sometimes put too much emphasis on tourism. Northern Ireland is beautiful. It is a lovely country. I really miss being able to get over, but I am going to be sneaking over in a couple of weeks' time. It is beautiful. You do not have the disadvantage that some towns in England and Scotland have, which is complete cloning. Most of my family are from County Armagh. I still have some family who live on the outskirts of Armagh and some people who live around Portadown and Lurgan. Believe it or not, every year, I wait to go home to buy all my gents' clothing in Portadown because it has about six
15 really good gents' outfitters. I can buy clothes in Portadown that I could never buy anywhere across Scotland.
Likewise, the food offer is more local. It is better sourced, and it tastes better than the rubbish that we buy from Tesco, Asda and places over here. You have a good starting point. You still have a fundamental underbelly of really good family businesses and family-owned pubs and restaurants. You have something to play with, but you need to have a vision and to be able to enact it.
When the 'Town Centre Action Plan' was published in 2013, we were established to drive that policy forward as the central point and as the trusted, credible people in the middle who were making sense of a very complex thing. We worked with all the sectors and started to drive lots of demonstration projects on how to repopulate town centres, how to think about demographics that are ageing and dementia-friendly towns and how to think about net zero and low carbon etc. We have made significant progress. The Scottish Government are now capable of investing lots of money across the country via my organisation.
We also work closely with the Development Trusts Association Scotland (DTAS). We have 250 development trusts for the smaller, more rural towns in Scotland. We also have a lot of business improvement districts (BIDS). We have 40 operational BIDS, from big ones in Edinburgh to smaller ones in Glasgow to small town BIDS. We have pushed the model out to have food and drink improvement districts, digital improvement districts and tourism improvement districts. An example of the beauty of that was when the pandemic came and big government was trying to support local government, which, in turn, was trying to support local communities. To be honest, they are so distant that they do not know anything about that local community. Having those local collaboratives in place allowed us to get investment down on to the ground where local people knew the community or people who needed help and knew the people who were able to give that help. Things were improved a lot quicker. You could think about having town centre partnerships or more support from chambers, business improvement districts or development trusts. It is definitely useful to have that sort of infrastructure and local community collaboration on the ground.
We underpinned everything with the town centre first principle. For too long, we were stretching the environment. We were building boxes in the middle of a farmer's field. We were shoving our hospitals in the middle of nowhere. We were building medical centres where people had to jump on buses or travel long distances to get to them. The town centre first principle basically now says that, if you are going to use public money for a big investment, you must think about the potential damage or the potential opportunity for your town. Could it not be located in the heart of the town centre in order to drive footfall and to reduce the carbon footprint and so on? The town centre first principle was the first driver.
I also sit as a director in the UK High Streets Task Force, and I am advising the Welsh Transforming Towns programme. I have been working with your colleagues south of the border on the Borderland initiatives and so on. There is absolutely nothing different in what you are talking about, but I would resist going down the route of being a talking shop. You just need to put some investment in to get things up and running. It is not a lot of money. For example, Scotland's Towns Partnership operates on a budget of roughly £400,000 a year. That covers all the data, the website, the events, the learning and the business improvement district programme. If you were to go into a town centre and tried to do a wee bit of civic realm work, £400,000 would buy you a new pavement. In reality, we have been able to support hundreds of settlements.
We are moving towards a new future for Scotland's towns. Our policy was published on 3 February, so not only did we have world-leading town-centre policy but we have now made it even better. To be honest, Westminster and Cardiff are following most of the policies that we have developed. 'A New Future for Scotland's Town Centres' has taken on board some of the comments that earlier contributors mentioned. It looks at the tax base, at modernising business rates and at using the business rates system as an incentive to get smaller, niche, start-up, independent, quirkier retailers back into the town, while understanding that retail will always be a key element. It looks at putting our public services back into towns in order to make them accessible to people. We need to build in health centres, educational institutions and council headquarters. We should not build them in the middle of a lake in Craigavon but shove them right into the middle of a town. The council staff then benefit businesses in the town, and that gives the whole town more vibrancy.
We have three sets of recommendations, the first of which is about planning and embedding town and city centres more firmly into economic policies. I was part of the first city deal in Scotland, and I am not a big fan of city deals. There is a risk that they will suck up all the energy and drain the surrounding
16 towns. For example, if you take that blunt approach with Belfast, what happens to Bangor or Lisburn, or even to as far out as Saintfield and Downpatrick? The energy will be sucked into the city, and all the big investments will mean that people have to go to the city for employment or education. There is a lot of learning in Scotland, where we have taken a more regional approach and made sure that towns are built into the hierarchy of that type of investment. I therefore urge caution on the city deal approach.
We are currently going through our fourth national planning framework, and towns are going to be critical to recovery. A lot of occupants of grade 1 city-centre offices are telling their staff not to come back because they can sit in their home and work to a blended pattern. They might need to come in once a week or once a month, but, by and large, employers are selling their big offices to housing developers and moving into smaller ones. Towns will therefore have the gift of all those people and their expenditure in their grip, whereas, in the past, they would not have had them, because those people were commuting. There are lots of opportunities there, so we need to plan for more housing. We need to think about our ageing demographic and build housing products for our parents' generation. We need to use the redundant retail space to create new housing opportunities for Generations X, Y and Z, and we need to think about the younger people who do not want big lifetime mortgages but instead want to be able to plug and play and move about the place. Until they are in their 30s, anyway.
The second set of recommendations is to do with the difficult stuff: the tax. Do we look at having a digital sales tax? Is it based on a transaction? If it is, it is probably just going to be passed on to the consumer, and nobody wins. How do we tax the big online platforms? It is likely to require something around turnover. We need to explore how we get to the bottom of that. New-build housing is zero- rated for VAT, yet if you try to repurpose a building on the high street, it costs you 20% VAT. If we want sustainability and to be net-zero carbon-friendly, how do we take that 20% disadvantage and perhaps put some of it on to the new-build sprawl that we do not want to see? Those are going to be the really tricky bits. Some of those actions are devolved to the Scottish Parliament, and we have already set up a tax and property group to look at that. Some actions remain reserved to Westminster, but, through the links with the UK task force, we have started to raise those issues.
The final set of recommendations is proof through demonstration. Some of the complexities are probably too big for the council guy to get into his head. He will be thinking, "How do I fix that shopping centre? It's wrecked, and there's nobody in it any more." People are wandering around thinking, "Who's going to fix this?". We are therefore looking at demonstration projects where we can get the public sector working with the right type of private-sector people and with communities to repurpose things such as shopping centres that are lying half-empty and are going to struggle in the long term, or to take space in the high street and let communities take ownership of that space and decide what goes in there. It could be around local production, co-working environments or young enterprise etc.
Let us therefore do proof through demonstration. We are just about to launch the climate action towns programme, which will encourage things such as local energy systems, local community ownership of energy, micro wind generation, battery storage and electrification. The Government, for the first time, have really put their money where their mouth is. Some £275 million is being put into the place-based investment programme, and a further £500 million is being put into the Programme for Government for active travel and the electrification of our town and city centres.
It is a time of really good opportunity, and, in Northern Ireland, I think that, if your task force can get some form of small executive to drive this forward, sense could be made of what is sometimes overcomplicated. We have too much retail and not enough people living in the towns, and we have net zero to deal with. That, to me, is a fairly simple thing on which to start making progress. I have been discussing this with Chris Stewart and the team, and, moving forward, I am more than happy to feed in by acting as a sounding board or, to a certain extent, as an expert adviser. You know what? It is my place. I may have been in Scotland for the past 29 years, but I am still from Northern Ireland. It is my home. That is me: blether over.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Thank you very much indeed for that, Phil. It did pop into my head that here we have a guy from the North who is working in Scotland and is advising England, Wales and the South, so it is about time that we tapped into that resource and utilised it here for the work that we are going to do. Thank you for telling us about your experiences. I will open it up to members for conversation in a minute. We will follow our more traditional model, so I will bring in the Deputy Chair next and then other members.
17 Many people in Northern Ireland may find it strange that somebody from the Assembly is asking what a "disruptor" is, but that was one thing that struck me. When you talk about that sense of disruptor, what sorts of things do people really need to be grabbing and shaking to the core to try to achieve that change? Do you mean by some of that that the Civil Service needs to move out of its comfort zone and do things that it would not have done previously? What sort of disruption was needed in Scotland? I know that it is "disruptor" with a small "d", if we can say it like that.
Mr Prentice: I said that STP needed to become a disruptor because the Civil Service is so constrained. There is lots of bureaucracy and procurement, and this was an agenda that needed to be driven forward very quickly. STP needed to have that freedom, so we needed to be trusted and credible and to be able to move across the different sectors. In the morning, I will be speaking to, for instance, Blackstone in the United States, an institutional investor that owns perhaps half the shopping centres but has no interest in the country whatsoever. In the afternoon, I will be speaking with community groups, and, in the evening, I will be speaking to the Cabinet Secretary. You need to have somebody who is fleet of foot and is able to work across that entire environment, without the constraints of being stuck in the Civil Service and all the bureaucracy that goes along with that. You cannot be an outright private-sector person either, however, because then you would have lobbies and everybody bleating on about their specific industry.
Something that you can gain comfort from is the fact that this is a long-term game. It is not a short- term fix. We know the trends around retail shift and citizen behaviour. We know the need for net zero. If you piece this together bit by bit, you will see that we are all undoing 60 years of decline. You cannot do that in five or 10 years. This is 20 or 30 years' worth of just getting the policies right. Start to punish the bad actors, the sprawl, the out-of-town development. Start to reward, encourage and incentivise the good behaviour, which is repopulation, net zero, community ownership and community wealth. Stop allowing people to plunder our local economies to extract that money to Panama, and stop giving it to Amazon, with the money going to China. Start locking that money into your local economy and really valuing what you have got.
I cannot state it enough that I love jumping on the boat in Cairnryan to get back home. The minute that I get back home, I feel that this is a special island. It really is a special place, and there lots of things to be proud about. You go in and you buy your meat out of a proper craft butcher, and you get your clothing that has been really carefully sourced. Then there is the beauty of the environment.
I will make one point about tourism. Do not focus too much on tourism. One of the towns that I worked with on the ground a while back was Barrhead, which is on the outskirts of Glasgow. Nobody in their right mind would ever visit Barrhead unless from there. You have to work with towns of that ilk as well. What we did in Barrhead was to speak to the people there and ask them what they wanted. They told us that they would like better health facilities, a nice shop in the middle of the town and a leisure centre. We delivered that. Barrhead is now a very highly functioning town, with better health outcomes, better educational achievement and better employment outcomes, and it is more climate- friendly. Do you know what, however? You still would not visit it. It will never be a tourist town, but it functions perfectly for the people who live there. That was done collaboratively with some public investment, but, primarily, the public investment was to give the private guys confidence that the place would be looked after. I spent perhaps £25 million to kick-start it, and the private sector then came in with about another £90 million.
The message is that every single place can be improved, but it needs to be done collectively. Post- COVID, we have realised the value of having the community voice and of bringing the unheard voices in our society to the table to think about how we can build better places that work for everybody. Instead of making some guy in Panama rich, let us keep the money ourselves.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): OK, Phil. Thank you for that. I will now pass over to Doug, who will probably namecheck all the Portadowns, Craigavons and Lurgans out there. If any member wants to draw in any of the witnesses who spoke previously to clarify anything, that is still an option. Many of them are still online.
Mr Beattie: Thanks, Chair. You are absolutely right, of course.
Phil, it is really good to speak to you. Strangely, I used to live in Edinburgh, Kingussie and Inverness, and, on a lot of what you said, I know exactly what you are talking about. I am now back in Portadown, with a local butcher's right beside the office that I am sitting in now, so I get a real sense in the town of what you were talking about.
18 You talked about the building of out-of-town shopping centres such as Rushmere by the Craigavon lakes. My question, which might drag in the team from NILGA, is this: how do you reverse that? That has now become such an established place for people to go to that it is sucking trade out of Portadown and Lurgan. As far as the council is concerned, Craigavon is becoming a town centre. How do you stop that? There is a real competing narrative here, with the council creating a town centre that is stripping out the services from another two town centres.
Mr Prentice: The short answer is that you do not unpick it. It is already there, and you have to work around it. I know the plan. Some of my family owned land in Craigavon. It was farmland that was bought up, and they then had to buy it back.
The second-city concept did not quite come off. It was well-intended. We have lots of new towns in Scotland that did work, such as Livingston and Irvine. It just did not work in Northern Ireland. I am not sure why. Irrespective of that, what Portadown and Lurgan need to do is to give something different. There needs to be a core offering for the resident populations in those towns, and then whatever happens with the centre of Craigavon happens. It would be a difficult thing to do to unpick it, because you have the lakes, the civic centre, Rushmere, lots of different housing estates and about a million roundabouts. You cannot unpick it.
We in Scotland still have lots of out-of-town shopping centres. What we are saying now is that there is a proliferation of them and that we do not need any more of them. Part of our policy that went out in February was for a five-year moratorium on out-of-town shopping centres. We said, "No more. Let us see what happens after five years".
I am quite happy that people can go and have that retail-destination experience. That is fine, but just make sure that the people in Portadown are not disadvantaged. One of the polices that we are bringing forward is a car-parking levy for centres like Rushmere. If Rushmere were in Scotland, we would charge people, because they can dump their car all day and walk around the retail warehouses and so on, while the people who go into Portadown are probably getting chased down by wardens if they sit for more than half an hour. We are trying to rebalance the bad behaviour of creating a big carbon footprint by driving long distances just to wander around shops to buy a load of rubbish, as opposed to using better behaviours around active travel and going out for essential stuff in your local town.
It is about trying to create fairness. There is an inequity in the system just now. It is very difficult, because there is the law of unintended consequences, with which you guys will be familiar. None of this is going to happen in Scotland overnight. We will engage with the Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC), the Scottish Grocers' Federation (SGF) and the owners of the shopping centres to try to work out a system of fairness and make sure that we have a progressive taxation system that encourages more localism and entrepreneurship. To be fair, Northern Ireland has a very good base and starting point for that. Build on it.
Mr Beattie: Thanks, Phil. Are any of the NILGA guys still there? Would they like to comment?
Mr McCallan: I am happy to. I will amplify what Phil has said. We have an absolute opportunity now. There are going to be satellite towns. Phil mentioned the like of Barrhead. I have lived in Glasgow, and I take his point. I also know of a place called Denny, which is outside Falkirk. I went there to buy a bottle of wine, and the police escorted me in and out of the off-licence. That has changed, because of an enabling planning policy and because people who are not institutionally driven but genuinely committed to local people, pride and place can start to act as, effectively, fifth columnists. They are not civil servants or, in the case of local government, public servants. We are not civil servants, as you know.
That energy and passion can change the legislation. In a former life, I was a runner, and I used to take my son to play football. He used to train outside Lurgan, and, one summer's evening, I ran into Lurgan. I was so impressed. A lot of people's perception about Lurgan might be similar to what Phil said about Barrhead. It is about unearthing that talent and making sure, as centralists, which the Executive are, and as localists, which local government is, that we divest and devolve to communities. That tends to be a mixture of the venture capitalists, who build the shopping centres but who have got to adapt their own physical investment, and the community wealth builders, who, in other words, are the people in the Lurgans. The thread running through the conversation is pride in local: pride in local people, places and heritage. We have to invert the pyramid. That sounds a bit nebulous and philosophical, Mr Beattie, but the urgency, the enthusiasm and the toolkit are there. They just have to
19 be deployed in a faster, better and more local way in order to unearth that talent and start to reshape it. We cannot look back even to yesterday: what is done is done. That enabling role, rather than a cannot or over-technical, bureaucratic approach, is what is needed. We have never had a better opportunity than now, because everybody is open to change. If we are not, we will be stuck under the skin of COVID recovery for much longer than we want to be.
Mr Beattie: Those were good responses, Derek and Phil. Thank you.
Ms Anderson: Thanks, everyone, for presenting to us. It has been difficult, because of the time frame. I would like to have asked more questions. A long-term strategy was mentioned in the context of Scotland and, obviously, here. As Aodhán said, the high street had changed long before COVID. We all witnessed that and were concerned about what was happening.
I am interested in what you said about your representative board. You said that it was small and that that was part of why it worked. Glynn and others have been campaigning for 10 years for a task force for the North. We have had the Executive for just over than a year, but, thankfully, we have the task force now. This is about trying to learn lessons. I was struck by the fact that your task force includes board representation from the voluntary and community sector.
Mr Prentice: Yes.
Ms Anderson: I listened to you talk about how you go to social enterprises — for instance, community arts organisations — about how you hand things over to the community and about how you make town centres vibrant. You said that the community can play a part in that. Will you discuss more of the benefits of that with us, because the inclusion of the community and voluntary sector is going to be vital in order for retail to be able to attract and encourage people back into the town centres? Even after what has happened during COVID, the pattern now is to order online, because it is the only access that we have at the moment. If we are going to try to change that and have vibrant town and city centres, we need to access the voluntary and community sector more, which has an opportunity to reach hard-to-reach people, as one might call them, in communities.
Mr Prentice: That is a very valid point. We recognised early on that places are unique. They are made of up stories, people and communities. We had let the ownership and control of that go to absentee and extractive economic models. We are now trying to pull it back. If you do not bring the community in, it will not engage.
I remember one of my projects in Barrhead, where we said to people in the local community that we would build them a 4G Astroturf pitch, and they replied, "Great. We don't want one. Give us half a pitch". I did not listen to them. I built them a pitch, and Princess Anne turned up for the opening. The next day, I got a call from the police to say, "They've burnt it down. They poured petrol down the drains. They didn't want your stupid pitch". I asked the people why, and they said, "Listen, you. We asked for half a pitch. You gave us a full pitch. We’re poor. All the people around us are rich. Their kids will come down and book that pitch, and they'll own it. We'll been asked to guard their cars, and that'll be about the height of it. Give us half a pitch, because nobody wants half a football pitch". I built them half a football pitch, and it worked. You have to listen to the people on the ground, genuinely.
The Development Trusts Association Scotland (DTAS) is something that you might want to consider replicating in Northern Ireland, because you get people who care about their community listening to the unheard groups: the disability and minority groups, and the refugees, who are the people whom we need to embrace in a new world. They are all part of our story, and it is people who make the difference. Too many people have not had a voice over a long time. We spent six months this year listening to them, and it was really encouraging to hear how keen they were.
In Stirling, for example, people have taken over an old retail unit in the middle of the town. A hundred artists and crafters are involved, and every time that they put on an event or a festival, thousands of people come into the town to engage with that. Kirkcaldy has a greener initiative, with about 300 [Inaudible.] If you do not talk to your communities, development trusts and charities, you are going nowhere. Start letting the smaller voices have a bigger say.
Mr Clarke: Colin Neill sent me a message in response to comments that I made. He would like an opportunity to come back in. He had no forum through which to contact you, Chair. He wants to address something that I said, and it is only right to give him that opportunity.
20 The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Absolutely. Colin, are you there? Unmute yourself if you want to come in.
Mr Neill: I am indeed, Chair. Thank you. It is in response to the structure of the task force. It should be smaller. I am not even saying that I should be on it, but it should be skills- and knowledge-led. It should represent a cross section of society, from community groups and union-type people to elected representatives. My only concern is that if it is 30 strong, and everybody is equal, any sort of voice is outweighed two to one by Departments. They should be there as special advisers rather than voting members.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): That point is well made, and one that we will give consideration to following up on. Are there any other members looking to come in? We are running over time. I am happy enough if members are content to leave it there.
Before we draw this session to a close, I will ask George Robinson to come in, although sometimes he prefers to call in. George, are you there?
Mr Robinson: I am, Chair.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Go ahead with your question, George.
Mr Robinson: I have a question for Glyn or Aodhán, if either is still there. They were talking about the task force. To my mind, the town-centre manager and the chambers of trade are the people who should be involved. They know the local town and area, and they are important people whom the task force should be joining up with. That is just my observation.
We have been talking about town centres. Online shopping is a great facility to have, but it does a lot of damage, particularly to the bigger towns.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): Aodhán or others, can you expand on that? Is there a model that suits? If we have gone too big with it, with 30 members and not enough advisers, is there an opportunity for input on a more local level that could feed upwards into the task force? Could the task force have some layers below it? You do not want it to get too complicated or big. I am just dovetailing with what George said. Aodhán, have you any thoughts on that?
Mr Connolly: We need to be very careful with this. It has to happen from the ground up, and the innovation has to be reflected downwards. The important thing, however, is that, when it comes to making plans for individual towns and areas, they be done from the ground up and that we have that granular input.
As far as the premise is concerned, there will be a need for strategy and vision. Those subgroups are going to be hugely important. As Colin said, I, too, do not need to be a member. There are other people who should be brought in for their expertise and whatever. I look at the wider-picture stuff: at the rest of Europe and what is happening across the UK.
We have one thing going for us in Northern Ireland, however, and that is that there are easy ways in which to communicate with local and political representatives and to feed into things. This group needs to be that extra channel. The big rub — the big friction here — is how you turn strategic vision into granular delivery on a local level.
The only other thing that I will add is that I was very disappointed to hear one of the other witnesses talk about people walking around shopping centres spending money on rubbish that they do not need. One of the good things that we have in Northern Ireland is an eclectic mix. We also have a symbiotic relationship between large and small retail. People will go and buy one thing at a name and then go to a small retailer for something else. We need to be careful about what we are trying to do. All retail plays a significant, welcome part in the economic mix that we have here in Northern Ireland. Big retailers are the biggest ratepayers in Northern Ireland. They are the biggest payers into BIDs. We should be learning the lessons of why those places have been successful. It is because they are accessible, are bright, have cheap or free car parking, have a wonderful way of marketing themselves and have a way of getting people — I go back to what I said at the start — to spend their time and not just their money.
21 One of the reasons that I was keen to be involved, or to have some sort of involvement from Retail Consortium members, is that the only way in which we will deliver this on the 10-, 20- or 30-year basis that I am talking about is if we do so in partnership and by building on the eclectic mix that we have.
Mr Neill: The structures that we have been given rather than set up mean that this is not about doing things to local communities but doing them with them. If the subgroups were to be decided by the board, rather than given to them, that is from where we could get additional representation. Regional people could be involved and give their input. The whole structure has to be about facilitating each area to do what suits it, however. It is not about saying, "Look, here is the standard model for your town centre". It is about helping the town centres, the people who use them and the local authorities to understand their opportunities and to facilitate their getting them.
The Chairperson (Mr McGrath): I will end the session there, because we have run over time. I thank everybody for their contributions today. A time limit of two hours was very ambitious, given the range of people attending. We could have talked to each of you for the two hours.
The Committee is keen to send the message, along with the Executive, that the revitalisation of high streets across Northern Ireland is a key priority. We want to see that happening, because the need was there pre-COVID, it has been exacerbated by COVID, and it will be there when COVID goes. We should use some of the agility that government has learnt over the last 12 months in responding to issues. That type of model may help us to give some very important first aid to the high street when it really needs it.
You are all involved in sectors that we will undoubtedly be in contact with again in the time ahead. I thank you for your time and expertise. At the end of this meeting, we will take on board a few of the ideas that you have suggested and issues that you have highlighted, and we will make those known to the Executive Office Ministers as part of this process. Thank you very much, indeed.
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