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| Cleethorpes Market Place - traders fear business will suffer if NELC introduces pedestrianisation |
GREAT Grimsby and Cleethorpes MP Melanie Onn has sounded her misgivings on the proposal by North East Lincolnshire Council to pedestrianise the market place in Cleethorpes.
She told 'Commons colleagues: "Local businesses are really worried that this will affect footfall for them."
Ms Onn was speaking in a debate, chaired by Immingham and Brigg MP Martin Vickers, about the need to regenerate town and city centres.
She went on to lament the lack of a national strategy which she maintained had led to the decline of town centres resulting from "a decade and a half of neglect".
"It has fallen to local areas to undertake plans themselves - expending significant cost and time - to present plans to Government and then to gradually eke out funds, at sporadic intervals, to try to fulfil their local vision.
"That has happened in Grimsby and Cleethorpes.
"An endeavour under the banner of the Greater Grimsby Town Deal Board and the commitment of local businesses brought about the establishment of the 2025 Group.
"The Group's members are working together to deliver the kinds of improvements that will make areas attractive and safe, to encourage the increased use of expanding town centre facilities."
The MP continued: "I have long argued that town centres and high streets need to evolve to survive, but that requires intervention when the market fails.
"Initiatives such as the new Horizon Youth Zone on Garth Lane, the introduction of a community diagnostic centre - that is not without its issues but I am raising them separately with the Health Secretary - or the proposed new transport hub will all go towards making Grimsby town centre much more attractive.
"We have some brilliant businesses in our town centres and on our high streets that all worked so hard through the pandemic to keep going in the face of rising bills.
"They have dug deep and kept their doors open.
"I went to the Great Big Small awards recently and I was pleased to see so many businesses celebrating and being celebrated for their contributions to the vibrancy of the offer across North East Lincolnshire."
Ms Onn expressed regret that her constituency has "loads of empty shops".
"Companies, particularly banks, are leaving big gaps that lie empty for extended periods of time.
"When they are filled - this is an issue that I have raised before - they are filled with vape shops and barbers and there is a real lack of a range of different options. "
The Grimsby News says: Melanie Onn does well to cast the spotlight on the proposed revamp of Cleethorpes where the NELC leadership seems not to have done much to encourage debate - at least not in any public forum. The authority should submit a planning application for its scheme so that all relevant documents can be scrutinised and the matters thrashed out in committee for all to hear. However, later in her speech, the MP’s reference to 'barbers' is less helpful - in fact, it is somewhat sinister. Although she refrained from using the term, 'Turkish', she is leaving her audience to fill in the space. Possibly sub-consciously, accidentally even, she seems to have been feeding into an unsavoury current of public opinion. And, on a different tack, why should barbers’ shops, of whatever nationality, be deemed less welcome on our shopping streets than ladies’ hair salons or beauty parlours?
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