Now that we're gradually coming out of lockdown (hopefully for the last time), our attention must turn to Lancashire's economic recovery and given that our current economic model is taking money and jobs out of local communities and damaging the environment, Lancashire's economy after COVID must be environmentally and socially sustainable. To do this, we have to prioritise the environment over the economy, protect small local businesses from the big corporations, create more space for nature, invest more in public transport and make homeworking a permanent feature of working life.
The environment has to take priority over the economy because the economy can only be sustainable in the long term if there are plenty of natural resources (such as food, fresh water, materials and energy) to sustain it. Therefore, we should embrace a lifestyle and an economy where we reduce what we use, then reuse and repair what we've already got and then recycling our waste before we extract more resources. For most of us, this means reducing food waste, using local repair services and second hand shops before buying something brand new and minimising our energy consumption.
We can't minimise our energy consumption if we don't reduce the amount of travel we do and travel more sustainably. Inevitably, we should make homeworking the norm to significantly reduce work related travel, encourage people back on to public transport and invest more in our public transport by creating new tram, reopening old rail lines and increasing bus services. This would reduce the need to build new roads and free up old offices that could be converted into residential apartments that are close to existing public transport links, facilities and businesses which would in turn reduce the need to build on our countryside which should be better protected anyway because there is too much countryside that's being built on at the moment.
Apart from reducing our environmental impact, we also need to create more space for nature. Local councils and community groups can do this by planting wildflower meadows and mixed hedgerows along roadside verges and planting more trees in our countryside, our parks, urban green spaces and along our streets. We could do with some more urban parks because not only do they support wildlife in urban areas but they're also vital for the wellbeing of people who would otherwise not have easy access to green space.
Although the environment should take priority over the economy, our economic recovery should focus on supporting small local businesses because they have been the main casualties of a lockdown. The big corporations have long been damaging the environment, damaging the high street and taking wealth out of local communities and this process has intensified during a lockdown that has clearly been designed to benefit big corporations because they've been able to take advantage of loopholes in the lockdown rules and they've got the wealth to cover any losses. The high business rates have made the situation for small businesses worse so business rates need to be abolished if the high street is to have a future. However, they do need to adapt to the rapid growth of online shopping which many have done. Colne created a virtual high street last year called 'Come to Colne' where all the businesses on the town's high street could set up an online platform on the website and it would be great to see more 'virtual highstreets' being set up across Lancashire. What we don't need of course is local businesses forced to close again to jeopardise any chance of recovery, especially when its easier to enforce social distancing in smaller shops and they've spent thousands on being COVID secure, often more so than businesses that have been allowed to stay open.
