A seaside resort once popular with holidaymakers has become a ghost town, residents say.
Households in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, have blasted the Tory-controlled council for failing to support small businesses and attract tourists again.
It is, in fact, two towns - Lytham and neighbouring St Annes - and residents believe the two settlements differ in both geography and economy.
"I believe that the council, Fylde Borough Council, do nothing for business in St Annes. They do nothing to help business," Alan, who owns Ducks Nuts Tapas bar in St Annes, said.
"Nothing whatsoever. They [the council] actually put on their website two weeks ago that they were celebrating a new charity shop in the high street and it wasn't a new charity shop, it had just moved from one place to another, but they were celebrating it.
"Why don't they celebrate new businesses and try and help new businesses?"
In the last two months, at least 12 new businesses have had to shut their doors in St Anne's alone, reports Lancs Live.
This includes Squire men's shop, Shoe Zone, Firepit and a furniture shop.
Lytham St Anne's, collectively, is minutes away from the bright lights of Blackpool, which relies heavily on tourism.
But Alan is concerned Blackpool and St Annes, the latter under control of Fylde Borough Council, doesn't get enough investment.
"The council does nothing to bring people into St Annes," the business owner added.
"They spend all of their money to help Lytham and very little help in St Annes. Walking around the high street and it's a totally different atmosphere to St Annes and it's not because they've got better shops there.
"It's full of charity shops, there's not one single bank in Lytham, there's no banks. We've got three banks left and a building society.
"We've got seven charity shops, about nine barber's shops and about eight or nine nail shops and four tattoo shops. That's all we've got here, there's nothing else here.
"Lytham has more charity shops and less everything else. It also has a few expensive eateries that aren't really any good. There's nothing extra that Lytham has to bring people in."
Alan alluded to the fact that many visitors take a trip to the nearby beach, but are not encouraged to walk into the town to spend their money. This sentiment is echoed by the ladies behind Margaret's Florists on Wood Street.
Ann believes that there should be more awareness of businesses in St Annes and more support for the new ones opening up. She was complimentary of the parking in the town, saying that there's plenty of spaces that now offer motorists the ability to park for 90 minutes, but this isn't doing enough.
A spokesperson for Fylde Borough Council said: "Fylde Council values all of our businesses and the contributions they make to the local economy, which is why we have a dedicated Business Engagement/Town Centres Officer in post to support all businesses across the Fylde Borough. As a Council, we are proud of our relationships with the STEP (St Annes Enterprise Partnership) and STAIR (St Annes Independent Retailers) groups, with whom we are pleased to work with to address the concerns of local business owners.
"We have also committed over 20 per cent of our total UK Shared Prosperity Fund allocation to supporting businesses across Fylde, with new projects recently starting including support to help any businesses to reduce their energy costs and their climate footprint, support for the aerospace, automotive and advanced engineering and manufacturing sectors, and coming on stream in the near future, business advice and support to help any business looking to develop and grow. We also work with regional partners who are delivering digital programmes, apprenticeship grants and employee upskilling initiatives.
"A project due to go live in June is a town centre footfall monitoring project to better understand the peaks and troughs of shoppers and visitors to our key town centres of St Annes, Kirkham and Lytham, this will help identify visitor footfall around the towns and the best opportunities to hold events that will attract new and returning visitors. In addition, the Business Engagement /Town Centres Officer has been working with the Town Centre Business Groups to develop a shop local loyalty scheme, already proving successful in Kirkham, this project will encourage shoppers to shop local, whilst encouraging new visitors to return and support the local town centre economy.
"Any Fylde business looking for support can visit our dedicated business website to find out what is available or they can contact the Business Engagement/Town Centre Officer on invest@fylde.gov.uk.
"From a strategic development perspective, Fylde Council has recently adopted the St Annes Masterplan, which outlines the vision for how St Annes will develop over the next 5-10 years. The Masterplan identifies several significant projects which look to connect the Town Centre and the Promenade and boost the local economy.
"The St Annes Masterplan can be downloaded on our website and was prepared after extensive consultation with businesses, residents and visitors to St Annes. The Projects and Regeneration service at Fylde is continuously reviewing available funding opportunities to deliver the masterplan.
"A £13.14m Levelling Up Round 2 funding bid submitted by Fylde was unsuccessful in January 2023 and we eagerly await government announcements with details for Round 3. In the meantime, Fylde Council will bring forward plans to develop an events space on St Annes Road West, a project which is taken directly from the Masterplan.
"Details of the circa £1.5m scheme will be brought before the Council’s Executive Committee in July 2023 with a target completion of Summer 2024. The delivery of the events space reflects the views of the businesses to allow more frequent and a wider range of events to take place within the Town Centre and will deliver on the Masterplan objective of driving footfall onto St Annes Road West and the surrounding side streets.
"In addition to the specific measures to support businesses under the UKSPF programme, Fylde Council has also committed £300,000 of Shared Prosperity Funding to the delivery of an events programme focused in St Annes for financial year 2024/2025. We look forward to working with our partners and stakeholders to develop the events programme later on in 2023. For more details on how Fylde will spend its UKSPF allocation please see the approved UKSPF investment plan."
