Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:54 pm on 9 May 2017.
We know that it’s hugely important that local authorities, when they develop their LDPs, look at how they can assist existing retail centres, including high streets. But it’s about more than that. It is hugely important for town centres to develop their own identity; how many town centres have a website? If I were to go to a town in Wales, can I find out what’s there? Is there a website? Have the traders got their own websites? And, of course, the reason why people go to out-of-town shopping centres is sheer convenience—they’re open. And they’re open particularly on Sundays when most people, these days, tend to shop. So, it’s hugely important that high-street retailers look flexibly at their opening hours as well. This isn’t 40 years ago when people went to shop in the week in the daytime and shops were open. In the main, people are shopping 6, 7, 8 o’clock at night, and they’re shopping on Sundays when a lot of high streets are closed, so there needs to be some flexibility as well with traders to make sure that they align their opening hours—there’s a limit to what they can do as sole traders—with the work patterns that people have now, not the work patterns people had, say, 30 or 40 years ago. It’s hugely important as well, as part of the LDP process, that sufficient room is given in town centres for more living accommodation and more office space. If you have the office workers during the day, you’ve got the footfall during the day to help the retailers.