We have seen our Historic High Street in Crawley struggling over recent years. While some businesses are doing well, or were prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, others are having difficulties attracting customers and making ends meet. Britain needs a recovery that delivers a bright future for our high streets. Labour has a five-point plan to put communities first and restore pride in our high streets.

• Labour would secure our high streets by:
  1. Stopping the Conservatives selling off Britain’s high streets for low-quality housing by scrapping new planning rules.
  2. Empowering councils to fill empty shops with new businesses to breathe life back into our town centres.
  3. Challenging the government to use Tax Day on 23 March to level the tax playing field for high street businesses and online firms.
  4. Establishing a High Streets Fightback Fund to help businesses hit hard by the pandemic to get back on their feet.
  5. Protecting family finances by reversing Rishi Sunak’s economically illiterate hammer blows to people’s pockets.

The Conservatives have completely failed to protect Britain’s high streets over the last decade. Over 7,000 shops have closed across the country on their watch. That’s why Labour’s five-point plan to deliver a bright future for our high streets is so vital. We need urgent action to reverse a decade of Conservative decline in our town centres. Labour led Crawley Borough Council is doing what it can to support the High Street but we need more help to fill empty shops and prevent their conversion to residential uses.

And we must reverse the Chancellor’s economically illiterate attacks on family finances, which will take even more money out of people’s pockets that they can’t spend on Britain’s high streets.

The elections on 6 May are a clear choice between rebuilding our country by breathing new life into Britain’s high streets with Labour, or more decline and hits to family finances under the Conservatives.

A vote for Labour to secure our economy with a stronger, more secure recovery for Britain.

And a vote against a Conservative Party that wants to take us back to the same insecure and unequal society that left the UK with the worst economic crisis of any major economy.