Burnham puts £210m behind high street revival ahead of Labour's gathering

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has unveiled a £210m programme aimed at regenerate the UK's town centres and high streets, promising to return empty properties to use and shore up businesses on the verge of closing. The announcement comes at a politically significant moment: Burnham is heading to Liverpool for his first Labour Party conference as prime minister, where he is expected to position making life more affordable as the central plank of his programme.

The funding is drawn from money the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government had already set aside for high street support and regeneration, rather than representing an entirely new spending commitment. That distinction matters for households watching budgets closely, but it also means the money is aimed at properties and traders that are already under immediate pressure.

The largest single component is a £125m derelict buildings fund, which Burnham said would be used to convert mothballed and dilapidated structures into usable space. A further £85m pot is intended to let communities themselves take over neglected properties, with pubs, clubs and shops specifically named as targets. The government also earmarked £65m to rescue businesses and buildings at risk of closure, and £20m to help communities establish co-operative enterprises and let out units that have stood empty.

Taken together, those four allocations add up to more than the headline £210m figure, and the government's published breakdown does not reconcile the difference. The overall size of the package, however, is not in dispute, nor is its central objective: shifting vacant space back into community use.

Burnham set out the reasoning in unusually local terms. He said people judge economic progress not by spreadsheets but by the condition of the high street they actually use — whether shutters are down or shops are opening, and whether an area feels like it is moving forward or being left behind. Today's funding, he said, would help put power in the hands of residents who know their neighbourhoods best.

The types of uses floated for repurposed buildings give a sense of the intended model. Rather than treating empty units purely as commercial property, the government is pitching them as community hubs, health centres, shared workspaces and cafés — the kind of services Burnham argued people want to see in their towns. It is a mixed picture of public service and market use, reflecting the fact that many high streets now mix a handful of surviving businesses with long rows of closed shopfronts.

Communities Secretary Angela Rayner said the scheme represented a commitment to see boarded-up buildings that have been left to rack and ruin converted into places residents would be proud to visit again. Her framing leaned on the visual decline of town centres as much as on their economic performance.

First Secretary of State Louise Haigh pointed to a devolution angle, saying the investment would give local people the resources they need to drive change in their own areas. That emphasis on local control is likely to be important politically, since much of the success of a regeneration fund depends on councils and community groups being able to move quickly once money is released.

The announcement builds on a business rates pledge Burnham made during the summer, under which pubs, clubs and social venues are to see 20% cuts in their rates from April. Taken together, the two measures represent a notable shift in how central government is using both capital funding and tax policy to support the high street, an approach that has been the preserve of opposition parties in recent years.

The political response was immediate. Peter Kyle, business secretary to former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, said Burnham needed to act with "more urgency" to boost growth as the prime minister arrived in Liverpool for the weekend conference. The Conservatives said their own plan for "stronger high streets" would abolish business rates for thousands of businesses and protect key community pillars such as post offices, pubs and pharmacies.

For Labour, the conference arrives with an affordability argument to make, and a high street package offers a tangible illustration of it. Higher business costs, weak consumer demand and rising vacancies have left many town centres struggling, and a visible regeneration programme gives the government something concrete to point to. The challenge will be whether money can be committed and spent quickly enough to change what residents see on their own streets before the political honeymoon fades.

Several practical questions remain open: how quickly funds will be allocated, which councils and community bodies will qualify, and how much of the money will reach areas with the least administrative capacity to bid for it. There is also the question of what happens once short-term grants expire and refurbished units have to sustain themselves commercially.

For now, the message is aimed at voters and local organisers rather than spreadsheets. Burnham's argument is that economic success is legible on a high street, and that reversing years of decline requires visible interventions. Whether £210m, set against the scale of the problem, can deliver that visibility is the test the conference will set.