---

UK World Heritage Sites

My hon. Friend is making an interesting contribution. As he will know, the world heritage site in my constituency is a living, urban heritage site, with several thousand people living in it. One of the issues that we face is how to maintain a vibrant urban centre when there are pressures from many directions, such as the pressures on small shops and smaller shopping centres, and the effects of that pressure. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to consider how urban heritage sites are affected by wider trends in the retail and shopping markets and in planning policy? To put it bluntly, the viability of the heritage site in my constituency would be affected if the local community were to run down because of pressures on the local shopping and retail centres; that would undermine the entire living nature of that heritage site.