Burnham puts £210m behind high street revival ahead of Labour conference

The prime minister has unveiled a £210m programme aimed at regenerating the UK's high streets and community centres, with money directed at bringing empty properties back into use and reversing the decline that has left shopfronts shuttered across many towns and cities. The announcement comes as Andy Burnham prepares to open his first Labour Party conference as prime minister in Liverpool, where he is expected to frame the party's agenda around making everyday life more affordable.

The bulk of the package is aimed at buildings. A £125m derelict buildings fund will be available to councils and community groups seeking to convert mothballed and dilapidated structures into usable space. Burnham said the money would allow empty areas to be turned into what he called community hubs, health centres, shared workspaces, cafés and the kinds of local services residents say they want to see on their doorstep.

A second element, worth £85m, is designed to let communities take over neglected spaces themselves, including former pubs, clubs and shops. The government said the aim was to put decisions about underused buildings back in the hands of local people who understand their area best, rather than leaving properties to sit empty while the surrounding high street struggles to retain trade.

Two further allocations are targeted at businesses and community enterprise. Some £65m has been earmarked for rescuing businesses and buildings judged to be at risk of closure, while £20m is intended to help communities establish co-operative businesses and let out empty units. Officials at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said the funding was drawn from money the department had already set aside for high street support and regeneration.

Burnham argued that economic progress is best judged at street level rather than in aggregate statistics. In his view, the test of whether a country is growing is whether shops are opening or shutters are coming down, and whether a place feels as though it is advancing or being left behind. He said the new funding would hand influence back to local residents with first-hand knowledge of their communities.

Communities Secretary Angela Rayner said the scheme demonstrated a government commitment to seeing boarded-up properties that have been left to deteriorate converted once again into places people are proud to visit. Her remarks underlined the regeneration theme, with the emphasis on rescuing assets that have already fallen out of commercial use rather than solely supporting new development.

Attention was also drawn to the devolution dimension of the plan. First Secretary of State Louise Haigh said the investment would equip local people with the resources they need to drive change in their own areas, describing it as devolution in practical terms rather than on paper. That framing suggests ministers want the funding to be presented as a transfer of control downwards, with communities deciding how best to spend it.

The announcement follows a separate commitment made over the summer, when the government said pubs, clubs and other social venues would receive a 20% cut in business rates from April. Taken together, the measures indicate a policy position in which the high street is treated less as a commercial by-product and more as social infrastructure — a set of venues, meeting places and services that the state has a role in protecting.

Opposition figures were quick to challenge the pace of the government's response. Peter Kyle, business secretary to former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, said Burnham needed to act with greater urgency to support economic growth as the party gathered in Liverpool for its conference. The criticism points to a wider debate about whether targeted grants and rate relief are enough to shift the fortunes of struggling town centres.

The Conservatives have set out a contrasting plan. According to the party, a strategy of "stronger high streets" would abolish business rates for thousands of businesses and protect what it describes as key pillars of community life, including post offices, pubs and pharmacies. The two approaches — targeted regeneration funding and broad rate relief — offer different remedies for the same symptoms of commercial decline.

Analysts note that while the sums involved are significant, they will be spread across the entire country and across a broad range of purposes, from structural repair to business support and community ownership schemes. Whether the money produces visible results on individual high streets will depend on how quickly it is deployed, how flexibly it can be used, and whether the underlying forces behind vacant units — changing shopping habits, online retail and out-of-town developments — are addressed alongside it.

There are also questions about the durability of community takeover models, which have a mixed record of success and failure depending on local capacity and sustained funding. Supporters of the scheme counter that the emphasis on co-operatives, shared workspaces and community hubs offers a route to keeping spaces occupied even when conventional commercial models no longer work.

Burnham's choice to place the announcement so close to the conference opening appears deliberate. With affordability set to be the party's central theme, high street regeneration offers a concrete, visible illustration of the government's economic pitch: a measurable commitment aimed at the places people see and use every day, rather than at targets visible only in spreadsheets.

For the towns and cities that have lost shops, pubs and other amenities in recent years, the test of the package will be whether shutters begin to lift. That verdict, Burnham argued, will come not from national statistics but from the people who live on those streets.