BETTER LATE THAN NEVER...

News that the Conservative MP for Monmouth constituency, David Davies has come around to the idea that the Westminster Government should take control of the two Severn bridges should be warmly welcomed. Currently the original Severn Bridge and the Second Severn Crossing are maintained and operated by Severn River Crossing plc (SRC), in approximately five years SRC’s contract will come to an end. While the Westminster Government is quite content for the concession to remain in private hands, the MP for Monmouth is not.

As noted by the Western Mail (06.08.2012), a briefing paper provided to Mr Davies from the House of Commons Library reveals how a European court judgement in 2000 determined when VAT is payable on bridge tolls, when they are operated by private concessions. According to the briefing paper states, local government authorities and other bodies which are governed by public law’ may not charge VAT on ‘transactions in which they engage as public authorities, even where they collect dues, fees, contributions or payments in connection with these activities or transactions’. What this means is that if the Severn bridges were run by a state body, then long suffering motorists and businesses would not have to pay VAT at 20% to drive across them.

Back in October 2010, a study for the Welsh Affairs Select Committee at Westminster, which is looking at the impact the tolls on Wales amongst other things. Professor Peter Midmore's study found that Welsh businesses were unfairly penalised by the tolls and concluded that the money should be shared with the Assembly Government and used to improve Wales’ roads and public transport. Under the current stitch up (sorry set-up), once the cost of the Second Severn Crossing is paid off (by 2014 or 2016) the revenue stream will revert straight to Treasury coffers in Westminster.

The study of 122 businesses commissioned by the Federation of Small Businesses found that the tolls had a negative impact on 30% of firms in South Wales, compared with 18% in the Greater Bristol area. While noting that the economic impact was not substantial for most, the study found that transport; construction and tourism-related companies reliant on regular crossings suffered increased costs and reduced competitiveness.

As long as the operation of the bridge tolls remain in the hands of a private company (Severn River Crossing PLC) then commuters, businesses and visitors will continue to get regularly fleeced. The bridge tolls have become in an effective a tax on jobs, a tax on commuters, a tax on growth and tax on business in the south of Wales. When the concession comes to end in 2018 the bridges could revert to the Department for Transport in London.

Plaid has long called for control, or shared control, over the bridge to be devolved to the Welsh government and those negotiations to this end should start immediately to ensure that the transfer is in place by 2018. Plaid is committed to reducing the tolls on the Severn Bridges to under £2 per car and recognises that the high cost of the tolls is a serious matter of concern for the Welsh people because of the impact on businesses, especially freight and logistics, and on people visiting Wales. The bridges are of such importance that it is only fair that control, or at least shared control, over them is in the hands of the Welsh people.

CAN WE MAKE IT BETTER?

News that the number of people visiting high streets and shopping centres has fallen more in Wales than any other part of the UK sadly comes as no surprise. On my way to work in my home town of Newport, I walk past far too many empty or closed but partially furnished shops every day. The British Retail Consortium has revealed that footfall in Welsh towns and cities has dropped by 9.2% between April and July, the UK average footfall was down 1%.

Part of this is down to the recession, part of it down to the over reliance of local economies by chain retail stores and supermarkets, not to mention the cumulative damage that has been done since the 1980's with the growth of out of town or edge of town retail developments. Take my home town of Newport, where two Newport superstores set to open new stores barely a mile apart (within weeks of each other) and may create 650 new jobs. Morrisons in Lysaghts and redeveloped Tesco Extra in Spytty (both in the south of Newport) are due to open their doors in the autumn offering a combined 162,432 square feet of shopping space and employing up to 1,000 people.

Newport currently has 23 supermarkets, a significant number of which don't just sell food, for the record, we have:

• seven Tescos
• three Icelands
• two Asdas
• two Morrisons
• three Cooperative food stores 
• one Sainsbury store 
• three Lidl and 
• two Aldi supermarkets. 

Some of the larger supermarkets operating within the Newport area have been specifically targeting the smaller more local shopping centres. One of the consequences of excessive economic impact on local economies from the expansion of the supermarket sector is a loss of jobs as local businesses go under. Supermarket domination of the retail trade puts the local food infrastructure at risk threatening the viability of local wholesalers and small firms and the associated jobs in other businesses that offer support services i.e. banking, financial services, building work, packaging, etc.

The economic consequences of the generational failure to create a level playing field for local small businesses (not just in Newport) over the last twenty five years. This has been aggravated by a failure to redevelop Newport's commercial centre and the failure to restrict out of town developments; something that is now beginning to reap some pretty grim economic consequences.

A study by the National Retail Planning Forum in 1998 of 93 new superstores found that each one resulted in a net loss of 270 local jobs. The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) noted that the UK is losing approximately 2,000 local shops every year and by 2015 (if this rate of loss is sustained) there there will be no independent retailers left in business.

This hits small businesses, consumers and our communities hard as they lose any real choice in the marketplace. Until fairly recently many or our smaller and larger towns, managed to retain a reasonably rich mix of local shops, small businesses and local suppliers. They have suffered in recent years as the usual suspects in the shape of “identikit” chain stores have run riot and replicated themselves across our nation's high streets.

Our Local Authorities (and here Newport is pretty typical) have been too often tempted as developers offering includes, sweeteners and inducements to ease the passage of proposed developments. They may be advised of the financial consequences of planning applications being taken to appeal if permission is refused and our elected representatives have been silenced by often dubious promises of potential jobs - so much for local democracy!

Local Authorities have failed to adequately research the implications of large scale developments on local retail needs within their development plans. If retailing needs have not been assessed then it’s pretty difficult to amend or refuse any potentially damaging planning applications from wealthy large developers, at which point local small businesses and consumers begin to pay the price.

Despite the lip service about improving the vitality and viability of our town centres, many out of town retail developments have consistently undermined this aim. Local authorities have turned a blind eye to the economic and social consequences of out of town or edge of town retail developments. The economic reality has fallen well short of the verbal aspiration, just look at the damage that has been done to Abergavenny, Chepstow, Monmouth, Newport and elsewhere.

How can local regeneration schemes ever hope to work, once the commercial heart of our high streets has already been seriously damaged. I don't have a problem with redevelopment but it's important to include an element for local retail and small businesses. Our small businesses end up being disadvantaged not just because of their inability to compete on level terms with the increasingly aggressive tactics of supermarkets and retail chains who are chasing an ever larger market share, but, because they get pushed out of the high street.

More than ever, our planners and our elected representatives at all levels need to think about the long term economic consequences of planning decisions. We need to take the longer term view, rather than get fixated on short term financial gains and questionable inducements from developers and the often hyped up promise of jobs.

Locally, in Newport, Labour ran the show from 1981 until 2004, effectively presiding over the run down of the town centre and a rapid expansion of out of town shopping centres, which to be fair even if they had opposed no doubt the Conservative run Welsh Office would have retrospectively approved. Yet even with New Labour in power in Westminster from 1997 and occasionally in Cardiff (from 1999) the local Labour run county council did little other than to sit pretty on the top of the pile.

They paid the price in 2004, being swept from office as New Labour's unpopularity grew. They lost control for the first time since 1979, but managed to run down the finances before election day. Now Labour in Newport is puring like a cat waiting for the cream, as they expect to be swept back into office, on the back of an unpopular Conservative - Lib Democrat coalition government, so they can get their noses back in the trough.

Next May, Newport goes to the polls and the election should be about more than merely throwing out the current lot out because of the record of their government in Westminster. Especially if the electorate is merely going to replace them with another lot who ran the town into the ground, when they ran the place previously. Repeating the mistakes of the past won't solve the current problems that beset our town at the moment, come May 2012 we need real change.