Public sector workers are being made redundant, and even larger numbers are being migrated to the big cities. Tax offices, council officers, health professionals are being brought into larger centres to create efficiencies. Remote offices are quickly disappearing.
And worse is about to happen. Take Newark, which has just lost its hospital’s accident and emergency department. Its magistrates’ court is due for closure, so the associated solicitors are getting ready to up sticks and move off to the city. For not unrelated reasons, its police station no longer needs a custody suite. Indeed, it faces significant police reductions and the fire station is under review. Across the country, market towns are facing the same nightmare.
In Retford in my own constituency, 200 public sector workers will be made redundant or relocated. Compounded by estate agents going online and bank branches closing, the town centre traders who have been at the heart of the market towns for a century are losing their core customers. Worse still, consumers are no longer accessing non-existent public services and have no more reason to visit, let alone use, the town centre.
Independent retailers will go first, but remember how Marks and Spencer exited the high street in previous recessions. A queue of chains will be watching shareholder pressure before joining the flight and market towns will become ghost shopping precincts alongside ever more powerful supermarkets. And traditional markets will continue to shrink month by month.
Dozens of small traders will pack up and move, while others will go to the wall and this process will happen very quickly, within months rather than years. Already we are seeing bigger businesses relocate to cheaper industrial estates and small traders desperately seeking additional bank overdraft facilities. Where are the customers who will replace the town centre spend of public sector workers?
For the taxpayers who surround these market town centres, they will see their frontline public services disappear. It is quite feasible that Retford could also lose its magistrates’ court and its police and fire stations.
With Tory voters mounting the defence of their services, high streets and communities, this is a battle that this government will be terrified of taking on. Who would have predicted that the Conservatives would cut away the economic foundation of their own heartland? Who would have thought that the traditional English market town could become the new frontline, with small business looking for new allies to protect their trade? Something will begin to stir very soon across these traditional towns.
Many southern and eastern seats are seriously contested only by coalition parties. Now is the time for Labour to make inroads into market town communities. To win again Labour must have a national message, a 633-seat strategy and a vision for all. There is no better place to start our fightback than on the high streets of our much-loved English market towns.
Ironic that the coalition are going to screw over Newark when the town’s name is an anagram of David Cameron.
They’ll still vote Tory even as they slip over on unsalted, uncleared ice on the public highway and break their silly Tory necks. See, I do care!