It was welcome news when Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram recently set to benefit from his £6m town centre fund.
As was its intention, covers our region’s hardest-hit areas - and anyone who knows any of them will be familiar with the very real poverty those communities face.
As a Wirral resident who lived in Bebington for six months after first moving to the region, I stumbled across nearby New Ferry without knowing much about it at all.
The immediate impression I got was one of absolute desolation and emptiness - how could things have become this bad for an entire community?
Since learning the full details of the situation by covering issues in and around the area, including the devastating 2017 explosion, I’ve come to know a passionate, tightly-knit community, whose fight for funding and justice, even with the Metro Mayor’s promise, is still nowhere near over.
Like so many towns in the North, these ten areas, not least New Ferry, would be justified in feeling left behind in every way.
But even with this generous funding, set to give them all an equal share of £6m, it’s safe to say much, much, much more is needed to help future proof these high streets which, as Mayor Rotheram says, must now either “modernise or decline further”.
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That’s not to mention all the other high streets that are struggling - every other day we see a new story about a chain of shops, restaurants or banks announcing closures. So how is it that we are going to save them from succumbing to internet shopping?
No one has the answer to this question yet. Big names in retail have told me in recent times about their bleak predictions of how town centres could look, even in 10 years.
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The best case scenario, I’ve been told, is for them to be filled with services - coffee shops, facilities offering activities, pop-up social spaces and beauty and wellbeing centres, with a select few concept stores.
So it's certainly not the end of all town centre activity by any means - but it's a markedly different picture from the current (rapidly diminishing) rows of shops.
Let’s hope then, that new Prime Minister Boris Johnson follows through on former Chancellor Philip Hammond’s pledge last year to impose an “Amazon tax”, or something similar, on digital services that make over £500m revenue.
It’s believed the 2% levy will raise a total of £400m a year by 2021 - a drop in the ocean for huge corporations such as Amazon, who most recently paid just £63m in business rates, almost £40m less than retailers like Next - despite an eye-watering £8bn worth of sales.
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This issue certainly requires more thought than just sheer outrage. Of course, it’s important to note there’s nothing illegal whatsoever about what the huge firm is doing.
The reason for it is that Amazon operates largely from warehouses, not shops, meaning rates are far cheaper.
The corporation tax paid by Amazon may be more contentious, however. The firm paid £61.7m in the past two decades - less than M&S forked out in one year alone, with a showing its tactic of diverting sales abroad limited its 海角视频 tax bill.
That’s why such a tax as proposed by Mr Hammond would make little difference to giants like Amazon - but a huge difference for small retailers and high-street businesses.
There are fears the levies may also hit small and medium-sized online businesses, so care is needed to ensure it’s only affecting massive corporations. But controversial as it is, it seems we are running out of options for forcing giants like Amazon to help our industries.
The policy *should* mean revenue made by these firms without a presence on the high street can finally be diverted into the pockets of those aiming to keep our town centres thriving.
Just think what some of the businesses in New Ferry, Prescot or Bootle struggling to even keep their doors open for another month would do for a slice of those millions.
It’s absolutely vital this or a similar policy is pushed through and that, crucially, resulting funds are not lost to austerity or the likely recession that could come from crashing out of the EU with no deal.