Burnham puts £210m behind high street revival as Labour conference looms

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has unveiled a £210m package aimed at regenerating the UK's high streets and bringing empty commercial buildings back into use, in a move designed to coincide with his first Labour Party conference as party leader and prime minister.

The announcement, made as Burnham arrived in Liverpool for the party's annual gathering, is directed at town centres where shutters remain down and long-vacant units have become a fixture. Burnham said the money would be used to rescue buildings and businesses at risk of closure, arguing that reviving neglected commercial property is as much a measure of economic success as any national statistic.

Under the plans, funding will be channelled into turning disused spaces into a range of facilities that residents say they want to see. Burnham listed community hubs, health centres, shared workspaces and cafés among the potential new uses, signalling that the government sees high street regeneration as a public services issue as much as a commercial one.

The money forms part of funding already earmarked by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government for high street support and regeneration. It is therefore a targeted deployment of an existing budget rather than an entirely new spending commitment, a distinction likely to draw scrutiny from opposition parties as conference season gets under way.

The largest single element is a £125m derelict buildings fund, which the government says will be used to transform mothballed and dilapidated structures. The aim is to make previously unlettable property viable again, removing the obstacle of costly repair works that can stop councils, landlords and community groups from bringing empty premises back into use.

A second pot of £85m is intended to enable communities to take over neglected spaces themselves, including former pubs, clubs and shops. This stream is aimed at giving local residents and councils a direct role in acquiring and reusing the kind of commercial properties that have proved hardest to let on the open market.

The government also pointed to £65m allocated to rescuing businesses and buildings at risk of closure, and a further £20m to help communities establish co-operative businesses and let out empty units. Together, the two main streams — the derelict buildings fund and the community takeover fund — make up the £210m headline figure.

Burnham framed the intervention as a test of how economic growth is judged. He argued that people do not assess national performance by looking at a spreadsheet, but by looking at whether shops are opening or the shutters are down on their own high street, and whether their town feels as though it is moving forward or being left behind. The funding, he said, would put decision-making power back into the hands of local people who know their area best.

Communities Secretary Angela Rayner said the scheme reflected a government commitment to seeing boarded-up buildings that have been left to rack and ruin turned once more into places residents are proud to visit. Her framing emphasised the visible transformation of streetscapes over the headline number.

First Secretary of State Louise Haigh took a devolution angle, saying the investment would give local people the resources they need to make change and describing the plan as an example of what devolution means in practice. The emphasis on local control echoes the co-operative strand of the funding, which is designed to put assets in community hands.

The announcement builds on a measure Burnham unveiled in the summer, when he said pubs, clubs and other social venues would receive 20% cuts in business rates from April. Taken together, the relief and the regeneration funds amount to a significant intervention in the viability of the hospitality sector and the wider high street, both of which have been under sustained pressure.

The timing has prompted a response from the opposition. Peter Kyle, the business secretary to former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, said Burnham needed to act with more urgency to boost growth. His intervention, made as the prime minister arrived in Liverpool, is designed to frame the new spending as too slow to have an effect on businesses struggling now.

The Conservatives are putting forward their own competing vision for high streets. According to the party, its plan for stronger high streets would abolish business rates for thousands of businesses and would prioritise what it describes as key pillars of the community, including post offices, pubs and pharmacies.

For Labour, the conference setting is significant. Burnham is expected to use the stage to set out a programme built around making life more affordable in the UK, with the high street package offered as a tangible example of what that means for people who can see their local town centre deteriorating.

The test of the announcement will be how quickly the money reaches the buildings it is designed to save. £210m spread across a network of high streets is meaningful at national level but modest in any single town centre, and the practical obstacles — ownership, repair costs, planning, and the shortage of viable tenants — are substantial. Officials will now face the task of converting the pledge into a pipeline of projects before and beyond the April start of the business rates relief.

The immediate political stakes are equally clear. Burnham arrives at his first conference as leader needing visible economic credentials, while the Conservatives are determined to argue that he is too slow on growth. The high streets package gives both sides a platform, but it also sets a benchmark: the empty units and closed pubs cited in the funding will be an obvious measure of whether the money has worked.