It was built as a postwar utopia for families seeking escape from bomb-damaged areas of London, but nearly 80 years after it was founded the “new town” of Stevenage is in desperate need of regeneration.
After two failed efforts in the past decade that relied on attracting big name retailers, the town is trying an approach that reflects new thinking about how to breathe life back into Britain’s ailing provincial high streets.
“We had two earlier attempts at regeneration in the last 20 years, but they were based around retail,” said Richard Henry, the leader of the area’s Labour-controlled council, recalling how a succession of brands quit the town centre, leaving gaping holes behind.
“The new approach is based around building new flats in the city centre and bringing new job opportunities,” he added. “We need to be more than a commuter town where workers come and go from London, we want to create a place that investors aspire to come.”
This more holistic approach is encapsulated in More than Stores, an industry report by the planning consultancy Marrons that highlights why successful high street regeneration cannot rely on the increasingly vulnerable retail sector.
Instead, town centres looking to reinvent themselves must blend their retail spaces with mixed residential housing, flexible office space, leisure and entertainment options as well as healthcare and historical heritage that turn high streets into lived-in spaces.
The pressure to be more inventive comes from a growing shift to online shopping and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw more than 17,000 shops close in the UK in 2022, according to the Centre for Retail Research think-tank.
Restoring high streets was a key part of Boris Johnson’s levelling up agenda, with a £3.6bn town fund and a £1bn Future High Streets fund, which disbursed grants of between £5mn and £15mn to more than 70 successful towns.
However, the piecemeal funds, which often need to be spent quickly and whose complex applications eat up valuable council time, have led to calls for a more strategic approach to spur private sector investment and better targeting of limited government resources.
Shevaun Haviland, head of the British Chambers of Commerce, warned at the lobby group’s annual conference, that derelict shops were creating “ghost towns” that need to be brought back to life.
The BCC has argued that the fragmented Whitehall funding pots covering the levelling up agenda should be consolidated and simplified.
“Rebuilding towns means ensuring that town centres have got more to offer, making them places where people access work, retail, health, leisure,” said Jane Gratton, head of policy at the BCC.
“That means better transport links, easier planning processes and more flexibility to draw in the private sector,” she added.
A UK “regeneration index”, created by Marrons, illustrates the need for a broader perspective. Based on cross-referencing data on affordable housing, population growth and job availability in 300 small UK towns, it identifies which had the deepest underlying resilience.
“Resilient town centres are those that are primed for private investment and have all the right ingredients for a diversified high street experience. Those that fare less well tend to be highly dependent on retail,” said Alex Smith, partner at the law firm Shakespeare Martineau that co-authored the report.
The authors argued that their findings offered a guide to which towns most need government grants to kick-start regeneration, and towns where the case for spending government funds was weakest.
The results showed the long-established north-south divide in the UK, with more towns in the north and midlands requiring government intervention, but also deep divisions within regions, with some towns in south-east and south-west England also in need of assistance.
Stevenage, which is less than 30 minutes by train from London and is home to a cluster of tech and life science brands, including pharmaceuticals group GSK, Airbus and IT provider Fujitsu, ranked in the top 20 UK provincial towns requiring government inputs.
The town won a £37.5mn grant from the UK government’s Towns Fund, part of which has already been spent on a new bus station and a multistorey car park with electric charging points outside the town’s station, to make getting to Stevenage easier.
But despite these early signs of progress, Adrian Hawkins, chair of the Stevenage development board, who grew up in the area, accepts that the town still has a long way to go in order to reinvent itself as an advanced industrial cluster that its founders dreamt of.
For example, the town needs to find £60mn to renovate its station, added Hawkins, gesturing at its tired entrance. “If you were from Airbus HQ and you had an executive landing from Boeing HQ in Seattle, it doesn’t exactly scream cutting edge,” he said.
Despite the need for a facelift, there are signs of a structural change in the town, starting with plans for almost 3,000 new homes in and around the centre.
Hawkins points to more than 100 apartments built above the shop space that formerly was home to a Marks and Spencers store, which quit the high street in 2014. The flats have helped attract a branch of PureGym, a 24-hour workout space, and a NHS-linked high street optician, with more jobs on the way.
A new branch of Co-Space, the co-working company, now occupies a recently derelict retail space off the town’s main square.
“It definitely feels like the pace of change has quickened, you can see the sheer amount of building,” said Robert Isherwood, an independent financial adviser who runs his business from the Co-Space.
From his window, diggers are visible preparing the ground for another residential development of 536 affordable apartments, delivered by the Guinness Partnership housing association.
The council hopes there will be further momentum when Autolus Therapeutics, a gene therapy company, opens its headquarters in a space right behind the town’s main square, adding another 400 high quality jobs.
“It’s residential that has been the catalyst. We have to reinvent the town around residential living in the town centre,” said Piers Slater, the boss of Reef Group, a developer that has also planning permission to develop a further cluster of life science facilities in a site next door.
The ambition, said Henry, the council leader, is that more high-end jobs will gradually see cafés and restaurants supplant the discount stores and betting shops that currently predominate in the high street.
“We’re creating more opportunities and employment, and looking to create more of a café culture,” he said, cautioning that money from both government and the private sector is essential to build critical mass.
Given the previous failed attempts at rebooting Stevenage, it will take time for sceptics to be convinced. On the high street Louis Lobjoit is preparing to open a fishmongers and luxury food store, selling nuts and seeds, Turkish delight and other delicacies.
For now, he says, Stevenage’s newest residents take the train to London to shop and go out. “Where would you rather hang out, Stevenage or Soho?” he asked. But he accepted that, in time, his new store, and others like them, should be attracting such clientele.
