High Streets for All Challenge
The High Streets for All Challenge kickstarted the London Recovery Board’s mission to deliver enhanced public spaces and exciting new uses for underused high street buildings in every London borough, bringing together local authorities, community and business groups, cultural and third sector organisations to join forces and develop much-needed capacity to support high street and town centre renewal.
Supported by the London Economic Action Partnership (LEAP), the Challenge provides targeted advice and £4 million of strategic enabling funding to inspire and help form these partnerships, prepare strategies and asset-based proposals, propose projects and test their effectiveness. It supports local engagement and promotes a culture of ideas to address common and local challenges and underpin the public re-imagining of high streets and build a pipeline of schemes for future investment opportunities.
The Challenge is underpinned by the Good Growth by Design ‘High Streets & Town Centres: Adaptive Strategies’ guidance which emphasises the public value of high streets and town centres and advocates a ‘mission-orientated’ approach to the development of ‘adaptive strategies’ for high streets diversification and renewal through innovation and experimentation which responds to locally specific concerns.
Challenge Outcomes
Following an open call in March 2021, 34 high streets were allocated funding of £20,000 each to develop their partnership, engage locally, and develop their ideas with guidance from the key questions set out in the Possibilities Playbook. Of these, a cohort of 22 exemplar projects across 21 London boroughs then received a further share of over £3.3m funding from the High Streets for All Challenge for the preparation of detailed strategies and proposals. This also included work undertaken in partnership with Power to Change to pilot Community Improvement Districts in Kilburn and Wood Green. All exemplar projects had access to expert support from the Mayor’s Design Advocates.
To date, the High Streets for All Challenge exemplar projects have secured over £4.6m match funding from other sources, involving over 370 organisations in partnership activities. Over 700 businesses have been supported, and over 340 events held. Delivery of the programme will continue until March 2024, after which a full programme-wide evaluation will be carried out.
The Challenge is open to a broad range of high street partnerships to be composed of public, private and third-sector participants and to be representative of local communities and businesses.
Partnerships could include London boroughs (including multiple boroughs), town teams and business improvement districts, land interests and developers, workspace providers, community groups, social enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises, cultural organisations, community businesses and charities within London that wish to drive and lead regeneration in their local area.
The lead organisation for your project must represent the partnership as a whole and be legally constituted and able to enter into a contract. Community groups or individuals who would like to propose an idea should discuss this with their local council.
The role of Local Authorities is two-fold. At stage 1 they will endorse their preferred partnership and exemplar high street location. From stage 2 onwards they will be expected to actively support the selected partnership and where appropriate act as the lead and or accountable body.
We will be funding activities that support high street partnerships in addressing local and specific challenges in line with those that have been identified for London as a whole:
- Creating a public welcome - How can we create streets and public spaces that encourage walking, cycling, cultural activity and boost visitor confidence, generating a thriving mix of high street activity within easy reach of all Londoners and at all times of day and night?
- Innovative places of exchange - How can we support both existing and new types of business and nurture innovation within local economies, through place-based policy development, targeted business support, planning, licensing and cultural and economic development incentives?
- Generating social value - How can we ensure that high street economies generate public value, shared prosperity and benefit from the socially productive use of land and property for the communities they serve?
- Connected communities - How can we promote social integration and active citizenship by strengthening local collaboration and securing vital social, civic and cultural infrastructure?
- Responding to the climate emergency - How can high streets help tackle the climate and ecological emergencies and poor air quality, whilst creating green jobs, developing skills and supporting a just transition to a low carbon circular economy?
There is flexibility about which activities the High Streets for All Challenge can support, as long as they are part of a coherent package focused on partnership formation and development of a locally rooted adaptive strategy; and as long as they aim to deliver the stated mission of delivering enhanced public spaces and exciting new uses for underused high street buildings and spaces - working with London’s diverse communities.
Further £3.3m to support high street recovery in 21 boroughs
In December 2021, the Mayor, Sadiq Khan, announced 15 projects receiving £2.3m in funding through his High Streets for All Challenge. In July 2022, a further seven projects were successful in receiving an additional £1m of funding. This created a cohort of 22 projects across 21 London boroughs with a total share of over £3.3m funding from the High Streets for All Challenge.
The projects will breathe new life into our town centres and high streets, helping them to flourish and thrive as we emerge from the pandemic and deliver on the Mayor’s mission to build back London’s economy and society.
Winning projects include transforming a vacant retail space into a youth hub on Church Road in Brent, an accessible programme of business support for local enterprises on Rye Lane in Peckham and the reactivation of vacant shopping centre units on Hounslow High Street.
Funding allocated to 34 exemplar projects
In July 2021, the Mayor announced the first round of exemplar projects for the High Streets for All Challenge. 34 exemplar projects have been allocated funding of £20,000 each, to address issues such as bringing vacant buildings into use, protecting cultural spaces and supporting employment on the high street.
The Challenge is supporting a range of innovative projects across London aimed at ensuring our high streets can flourish and thrive as we emerge from the pandemic.
Ideas to reimagine your neighbourhood
Since March 2021, we’ve been asking Londoners for their best ideas to improve their neighbourhoods and ways to make it even better for everyone.
These suggestions have been providing a way for communities, councils and partner organisations to see what people want to happen in their local areas – and to incorporate those into their plans for recovery.
We’ve put the ideas Londoners submitted for their local area alongside the 35 exemplar projects, Make London crowdfunding campaigns and the Boosting Community Business London projects on a map.
The ‘Possibilities Playbook’
The Possibilities Playbook sets out the High Streets for All Challenge in more detail. It also presents innovative responses offered by exemplary partnerships and highlights useful resources and precedents for the development of high street strategies.
High Street Survey
The Greater London Authority have commissioned Opinion Research Services (ORS) to conduct a survey to better understand what residents think about their local high street and residents’ awareness of current efforts to improve it.
The Survey will run from January to March 2023.
Opinion Research Services (ORS) is carrying out the survey on our behalf.
The Survey is for residents aged 16 and above. ORS will randomly select households to take part in the survey. These households will receive an invitation letter in the post that asks them to take part and gives instructions on how to do so online.
If you have received an invitation letter, please take part in the survey so we can understand a wide range of local views that will be used by the GLA to inform policies to help improve your local high street.
Those who are unable complete the survey online will be sent a paper questionnaire in due course.
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