Private sector should not foot cleaning bill for streets of shame

Published on Sunday 21 October 2007 01:03

WALKING along Edinburgh's Princes Street early on a Saturday morning is a spirit-sapping business. The sorry signs of the UK's binge-drinking culture are evident in many of the shop doorways and pedestrians are forced to navigate their way through cigarette butts, fast food wrappers and other unattractive debris from the night before.

It's not an inviting environment - either for shoppers or for the business owners who are faced with the unpleasant task of washing down their doorsteps before people come in.

Given that Princes Street is the first road that most visitors and, more importantly, potential investors head for when they come to Edinburgh, it's a sorry state of affairs and one that a new business lobby group set up by Andrew Murphy, managing director of the John Lewis Partnership in Edinburgh, is trying to change.

Later this week the Edinburgh Business Improvement District (BID) will publish plans for a business improvement zone in the centre of the city.

Stretching across Princes Street, Queen Street and George Street, the zone is intended to create a better environment for businesses and shoppers and, as a result, increase revenues in the area.

The BID is the first of several business improvement zones planned for Scotland, and similar plans are also afoot to improve conditions for retailers and small businesses in central Glasgow, Bathgate, Falkirk and Inverness.

The thinking is that by making the area more attractive, cleaner and safer, more shoppers will want to spend more time in the zones, more businesses will want to set up there, and the local economy will be transformed.

Businesses will contribute 1% of their rateable value towards employing litter pickers and security staff and taking other measures to make the streets look more inviting.

It sounds like an attractive prospect. After all, many Edinburgh residents think Princes Street couldn't get much worse. It's also healthy to see large retailers such as John Lewis clubbing together with smaller businesses to try to improve a situation that affects them all.

But it does beg the question: why are they having to do it at all? The BID's draft plan, which goes out to consultation later this week, contains a few simple but effective ideas to reverse the problems currently experienced by city-centre retailers. But take a look at the themes - cleanliness, safety and accessibility - and it quickly becomes clear that many of them overlap with the council's responsibilities.

Edinburgh is by no means a cheap place in which to live or do business - the council tax bill that recently landed on my doorstep is testament to that. Surely simple tasks like keeping the streets safe and clean are what our council tax bills are for?

There's nothing to say that the private sector can't assist local authorities with initiatives to improve the local economy, but that assistance must not spill over into private sector subsidisation of basic public services such as street cleaning. Otherwise it will quickly become another bill that high street businesses face each month along with high rents and business taxes.

In a climate of increased competition from internet shops and tough trading conditions on the high street, city-centre retailers - especially the smaller ones - can do without yet another dent in their income.

The business zone idea is a good one but only if the services the BID provides are a supplement to, not a substitute for, services that should be provided as standard.

Another danger is that while retailers that can afford the high rents in the centre of town will benefit, other less prominent areas, which are home to smaller independent businesses, will slip into decline as shoppers are tempted away.

Plans to improve Scotland's shopping streets are a welcome prospect but they need to be extended to include all areas. After all, it's the more peripheral shopping districts that are often in greatest need of regeneration.