Can local politics level up Rugby’s town centre?

Some 140 years ago, the people of Rugby clubbed together to build the town's clock tower.

It was an example of what the Conservative government might call levelling up.

Today, the same drive to improve Rugby's town centre still exists.

And yet, the Tory-controlled council has said the town centre is "not achieving its full potential".

The symptoms of decline are familiar to many councils. Too many shuttered shops, empty car parks and not enough local transport links and thriving businesses.

Rugby Borough Council's solution was a town regeneration strategy and an investment pot worth £5m.

But only about 3% of that has been spent so far and the council did not apply for money from the government's levelling up fund, reasoning it would not get any as the area is classed as low priority.

Now, ahead of local elections in Rugby next month, businesses have wondered if the council's plan has left them short-changed.

"It's a complete failure," said Simon Hawker, who runs the Yum Yum World children's amusement centre.

Parking charges, changes to the marketplace and plans to turn part of the main shopping centre into flats have contributed to a drop in footfall, he said.

Without more shoppers, he added, "big businesses won't come in".

Some of the doom and gloom is tempered by the pride in what Rugby has to offer.

The town attracts interest for its association with the sport of rugby and the school where it was invented. With good train connections to Birmingham and London, Rugby also had the fastest growing population in the West Midlands in the decade to 2021.

While big brands have disappeared from the high street, the town is drawing in new independent businesses, including the Brownie Addict Bakery.

Opened last year, the coffee house and bakery chose Rugby over near neighbours Leamington Spa and Stratford-upon-Avon, and has reaped rewards.

"There wasn't anything like us," said manager David Carlos. "We get a lot of regulars who are saying nice things."

Louise Fordham of Bespoke Hairdressing said Rugby had a lot to shout about.

But having run her business for 24 years and seen a few regeneration plans, she said she did not have much faith in the latest one.

"At the moment, people don't believe the council wants a town centre," she said.

The council did get government funding of £3.1m from a different pot of money, the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

It announced its regeneration strategy in 2022, hired consultants and spent £158,000 of the £5m allocated to town centre improvements.

Meanwhile, Rugby slipped from 225th in 2022 to 270th last year in an annual ranking of retail spaces by CACI, a business consultancy.

The political optics of this in an election year have not gone unnoticed by Rugby's Labour Party.

The party's area leader Michael Moran works on development schemes for a living and said the council was not "getting to grips with the town centre's relative decline".

So what's his party's vision?

"Dealing with the empty units - I'd sit down with the relevant owners and we'd come to some arrangements," he said. "We want to bring in town centre activity."

There will be no extra money if Labour take control of the council, though.

"The £5m to kick start regeneration is ample if it's used intelligently," he said.

Derek Poole, the council's Tory leader since May 2023, admitted the £5m "is a fly in the ocean".

But he insisted the local authority had been "working with companies who have got the vision to regenerate the town".

What is his message to voters who say the regeneration plans have not moved fast enough?

"All I can say to voters is please bear with us," he said. "It doesn't happen overnight."

He said the Tories want "a night-time generation", with "nice restaurants, more cafes and independent shops - not large shops".

The Green Party in Rugby wants to see vacant areas above the shops transformed into affordable and energy-efficient housing.

The new accommodation would have a low-carbon footprint and create jobs, said Green candidate Phil Hemsley.

"Bringing people to live in the centre would naturally increase footfall for shops, and draw in new shops," he says.

Others focus on retaining existing shops.

A builder by trade, Mark Thomas was encouraged to stand for election as a Liberal Democrat candidate on the basis of his community activism.

He wants to set up a charity to help struggling shops turn into community-owned businesses.

"We can do something about these empty shops because it feels like there is no-one coming to help us," he said.

The preference for a community-led approach to levelling up is shared by Devenne Kedward, Reform UK's parliamentary candidate for Rugby.

She's calling for the council to step back from regeneration and hand control of the funding to a task force of local businesses, developers and residents.

"Give the control over regeneration of a business area to those that do business there," she said.

In the spirit of the clock tower, a culture of do-it-yourself levelling up has developed in Rugby.

The question of how to do it is where local politics - and who runs the council - comes into play.

Elections take place in 14 of Rugby Borough Council's wards on Thursday 2 May 2024.

Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, X, and Instagram, Send your story ideas to [email protected]