Attracting new businesses with highly-skilled workers could be key to lifting Leicester city centre out of the post-Covid downturn, a round table event has heard.
Valentine Quinio, a researcher at the Centre for Cities think-tank, said high earners would have the spending power to help the city’s economy grow after almost a year of lockdown.
Speaking at a virtual roundtable hosted by East Midlands Chamber and Leicestershire Business Voice, she urged politicians, officials and industry leaders to help the city move away from an “over-reliance on retail”.
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Even pre-Covid the city centre was losing stores and chain restaurants as the shoppers moved online.
Some of that space has been filled with leisure providers such as Treetop Adventure Golf, Social Climbing, and bowling alleys such as East Street Lanes and Lane7.
New hotels and PRS accommodation schemes have gone up, and there are plans to replace the now closed Debenhams in Highcross with a 338-flat complex.
And in recent years the city has seen a number of professional services firms move in including Mattioli Woods, Shakespeare Martineau and IBM.
Ms Quinio said more should be encouraged to follow.
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She said: “Like all city centres in the 海角视频, Leicester has been heavily impacted by the pandemic.
“As we’re hoping to enter the recovery phase in the next few months, the question now is “to what situation is Leicester centre bouncing back, and how has this been affected by Covid?”.
“Data shows there are a number of strengths and opportunities Leicester centre can build on, but also long-term challenges to address.”
Ms Quinio said the strongest cities had a strong base of high-skilled exporting businesses in industries such as manufacturing, professional and financial services, and software development.
They tend to prefer city centre locations and pay more, bringing in workers who spend their money in local cafés, restaurants and hairdressers.
Centre for Cities data suggests Leicester lags behind the national average for highly qualified workers, quality and quantity of office space and transport.
It said its underperformance was strongly linked to having too much retail and not enough office space – while its shop vacancy rate was also high.
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However, its relatively large proportion of industrial space offered scope for repurposing into different uses, such as offices.
Ms Quinio said: “Leicester can actually build on a higher than average active travel uptake – people walking and cycling to work – compared to many city centres.
“That is a strength because it’s something many other cities will be looking to improve in the future.”
National footfall data collected by the Centre for Cities found Covid-19 lockdowns had a greater impact on bigger cities, with Leicester having the double whammy of its own local lockdown.
But much of this recovery was during weekends, with midweek daytime trade suffering most, while city centre purchases also lagged behind.
She said: “Pre-pandemic footfall data shows activity peaked during weekends, as opposed to weekdays, and in strong city centres the opposite is true.
“This has a knock-on impact on the strength of the high street because activity peaking on a weekday means it is workers who have more money to spend on the high street on a daily basis.
“Online shopping is less of a threat than the lack of spending power, so the challenge now lies in attracting these high-skilled businesses, which will in turn benefit the whole economy.
“Policy needs to focus on making the city centre an attractive place for businesses to locate and this will require investing in skills, commercial and office space, transport and the public realm.”
The round table discussed the potential need to create flexible and collaborative working spaces for start-ups and young workers, creating reasons for people living outside the city to visit.
It also considered how to ensure money made in the city centre is shared with poorer wards.
The Chamber, LBV, and the BID Leicester business improvement district will present the findings to Leicester City Council and the Leicester and Leicestershire Local Enterprise Partnership for further exploration.
Chris Hobson, director of policy and external affairs at East Midlands Chamber, said: “While in the here and now it is all too easy to see the challenges, as the economy recovers from the impacts of Covid, a city like Leicester has massive potential to grow and excel.
“In order to do this, it’s essential that the business community plays a leading role in sharing ideas and shaping policy to support the creation of a city centre that is open, diverse, welcoming and a place where workers, families, students and others want to spend their time and money.
“The discussion identified some fantastic ideas to do this. We now need to work across public and private sector to help turn those ideas into a reality.
“The recovery presents a fantastic opportunity to think differently and it’s important we seize that.”
LBV chairman Robin Pointon, who is also managing director of sustainable transport consultancy Go Travel Solutions, said: “The issue of how Leicester’s economy can recover from the pandemic and develop beyond that to build a better city going forward is central to the plans of all city businesses and stakeholders.”
BID Leicester director Simon Jenner said: “We’ve been following the Centre for Cities data closely and one of the things that’s emerged is a strong strategic consensus around the importance of people living and working in the city.
“We’re moving in the right direction in this respect, with some very good examples of businesses relocating to the city in recent years such as Mattioli Woods, IBM and PPL PRS, while there’s also a big increase in high-quality residential accommodation with schemes such as Waterside Leicester.
“There’s also demand for more business relocation so one of the issues we need to look at is the supply of quality office accommodation because we recognise how having more people with spending power in our city will help businesses.
“Broadly speaking, in the 20th century, we hollowed out our towns and cities, and gave them over to retail, but now what we’re seeing is an effort to create more of a blend that still includes retail but with more choice.
“There’s a lot of work going on to strengthen the offer around culture, leisure and food so people can have outstanding experiences, and we’ve seen some really positive signs of this heading in the right direction.”