I can only welcome the fact that the Government has responded to my lobbying over the problems of empty shops in our high street.

This I did on behalf of the Local Government Association in February. The basic idea is that empty shops (especially those boarded up) can drag the rest of a high street down. If councils had powers to take these shops over on a temporary basis – perhaps for use as galleries or centres for the unemployed – then the retail sector is more likely to come out of the recession relatively unscathed.

The Government will be announcing today a £3 million fund to tackle the “recession in the high street”. The money will be given to local councils to come up with “creative” ways to reuse shops left empty as a result of business closure or bankruptcy.