A broken high street and its billionaire owners

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07Today, the billionaire Londoners who bought an entire town centre in the north of England and left it to rot.

0:23It's a horrible day. What are we doing here, Josh? Where are we? We are in the heart of London's bustling West End, I suppose you might say. We are on Shastby Avenue, which is theatre district, theatre land. There's families going about, touristy families with Union Jack umbrellas and rain ponchos. It's a pretty miserable day. I've arranged to meet Josh Halliday, the Guardian's North of England editor, outside an anonymous office block near the theatre that's showing Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I was imagining something a little bit grander than this. Yes, so was I. I was slightly underwhelmed.

0:57I mean, it's a kind of really tired 60s frontage. It looks really nondescript, and maybe that's the idea. You wouldn't think this is one of the wealthiest property firms in the UK. No chance. For months, Josh has been trying to get answers out of the mysterious brothers whose billionaire property company is headquartered here. Their property portfolio is massive. It spans London, New York and Boston. But Josh is interested in one investment in particular. Now, it's not the most valuable, not by a long stretch, but it is perhaps the biggest and most consequential. An entire town centre 300 miles away in the north of England.

1:33Josh has called, he's emailed, but they've declined to answer any of his questions. And that's why we've come here on a rainy February day to try a more direct approach. Hi. Thank you. Hiya. Rick, journalists from the Gardening newspaper. but we were wondering if Benzine Freshwater would be available for an interview with us. We're doing a big piece of work on a place called Newton Acliffe. The town centre is entirely owned by Mr Freshwater. Right, he's... I couldn't tell you if you could, I shouldn't think you could. Does he have a secretary you might be able to floor? Is he in the office today or somewhere?

2:16No, he's not. And I've got this to you as well. He's secretary as well. If you can leave us something. I'll leave you my business card. Lovely. Okay. And she might get in touch with you. Right, mate. Because I've said love. Spoiler alert, she didn't get in touch. But while these publicity-shy brothers avoid our questions, the residents of Newton-Acliffe despair of what has become of their once thriving town centre. And this town was fantastic. And now look at it. I mean, there's a lot of people who open little shops here and then they couldn't afford it, so they've gone elsewhere. I honestly, I hate this town centre.

2:51I mean, I do love people.

2:56Now, high streets like this one find themselves at the top of the political agenda. Labour, Conservative and all the rest of them, to me, they're not good. They don't live like we live. They don't listen to the people. From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus. Could Newton A. Cliff's miserable town centre show reform's path to power?

3:22So Josh, we're back in the warm and dry of the studio now. Let's start at the beginning of this story. Why Newton-Acliffe? How did all of this begin for you? Well, this story began for me from conversations I was having with MPs across the north of England. And the one issue they all seemed to raise was the state of their high street, their town centre. They were really concerned that it got so much worse over the last few years. for a lot of people it symbolized how everything's gone rubbish basically how britain has become broken uh and then that sort of led me on to a place called newton a cliff which is a town in county durham near darlington it's the biggest town uh near it i'd been there reporting a few times before because it's part of a constituency where tony blair used to be the mp so it's kind of interesting for all sorts of political history reasons and the one thing that people used to complain about whenever I go to Newton-Acliffe is the state of the high street in the town centre.

4:18And tell me a bit about the history of Newton-Acliffe because it's a new town isn't it that was built with pretty lofty aspirations. So after the second world war a guy called William Beveridge who's the father of the social security system welfare system he sought to sort of remodel Britain for a kind of new modern healthier way of living. But for the things which everyone needs for pensions in old age, funeral expenses, medical treatment. Everyone will be insured. And everyone will be insured for these and all the other benefits... His vision sort of centred on a few new towns, as they called them.

4:59Many of these were on the outskirts of London, which, as you imagine, was heavily damaged in the war. Fifteen new towns are being built in Britain. New homes for 700 ,000 people. The kind of vision was that people would begin living in town centres and everything would be there for them. Thriving high streets, good jobs, easy walking distance to the town centre. The town is also the people in it. They're meeting and mixing, they're jostling and laughing, they're indignation and they're pleasure. Newton Acliffe was William Beveridge's flagship new town. He even moved there personally and lived just on the outskirts.

5:33Put his money where his mouth was. He did. So he oversaw personally its creation. and he said it would be a town of hopes and dreams. He described it once awkwardly as a paradise for housewives, imagining that when they weren't busy doing everything else, be able to go shopping on the high street, which he named Beverage Way. Right, okay. So not so humble himself then, I suppose. No ego there. And yeah, it got an official opening by a very young Queen Elizabeth in 1960. And for the first couple of decades, it was a really thriving, exciting place to live. You know, everything was new. Houses were all new.

6:10Lots of people travelled from across the north of England, from the Midlands, from Scotland, to jobs in manufacturing and chemicals factories. The high street was booming, and Newton-Aycliffe was seen as really a successful version of a new town built from scratch. And lots of people that live in Newton-Aycliffe today have lived there for decades. 54 years. I've been here 40 years. Right. And I've been here 54. They can remember the good old days where they were real off shop after shop after shop where you could get anything you wanted. And there's been this lovely little shop, Jack and Jill, and I'll never forget it.

6:45I used to get all that clothes from there. The toy shop used to pay weekly. Harding, yes. You started on it? Go up the ramp and pay weekly. January and then pay right till December and all your Christmas shopping was done. Wow. It was absolutely brilliant. Now it is just... We're discussing the town. I have lived here all my life. Yeah. And I've seen it. And so that was then, this sort of paradise for housewives of the 1960s. What is it like now? Well, today Newton-Acliffe looks very different. I mean, like all high streets have suffered a decline over the last 10, 15, 20 years. As we know, internet shopping has boomed.

7:24High streets look completely different to what they did 20 years ago when you had the BHS and the Woolworths, the big beasts of the high street. Today, it feels a bit like a ghost town. to be honest you walk up and down it feels redundant extremely tired you'll walk past and you're hearing people muttering to themselves how it's a disgrace when I was doing the reporting for for this story I was out I had my notebook and I was counting the shops and someone spotted that I had my notebook a teacher he just said to me it's disgusting isn't it really and people feel really really strongly about it I think partly because of the sense of nostalgia what used to be there but also that it's been allowed to get this bad because it's not that easy for people to buy things from the internet.

8:11Many people can't drive, so they rely on bus journeys into their local town centres. So it's really important for a lot of people that their high streets have what they need. Obviously, I bring my 83-year-old neighbour down the town. Yeah. And we've got literally nothing. I mean, we lost the lect. We've lost the road course, obviously, anyway. Yeah. We have no peacocks, neither. No. We just have that. Yeah. So we've lost all the... And this is over the last... ...a wide few shops. Yeah. Over the last few years, basically. As I was doing this reporting, I wanted to do an official tally, if you like, of what shops were open and what weren't.

8:46So of the 49 on Beveridge Way, 23 were vacant, which I think is just under half. And that's four times higher than the national average for town centres. I mean, you can see on the signs the businesses that used to be there before... Oh, the sort of ghostly... Yeah. Yeah, and the banks have gone. There's hardly any cash machines. There's a Greggs, I think there's four charity shops. There's a Ladbrokes, there's two or three discount retailers, and there's a post office that's still clinging on, but just about. And there's a Specsavers, but it's really kind of down to, it's bare bones. We can't get a decent pair of shoes.

9:26The only place that sells shoes, and they're not that good, is Tesco's. Honest to God, it's absolutely useless to what we used to be. And there's no bank now? No. No paper? No. No cash machine? No. And we're in Barclays. The only time we can go is Monday. So how did you go about trying to find out why Newton Acliffe was in such a sorry state? So there was a lot of trawling of local news articles, Hansard speeches by previous MPs that kind of led me eventually to this one company. But it was a mystery that kept on giving because this firm is shrouded in secrecy, owned by two incredibly reclusive billionaires.

10:07They don't do media interviews. I couldn't even find a picture of them anywhere. But these brothers are called Ben Zion Freshwater and his brother Solomon, who are both in their 70s. It's a family firm. It was started by their father who fled Poland before the Second World War. They were described in the 80s as one of London's biggest commercial landlords. So they've always had a property empire. But over the decades, it's grown and grown and grown. They eventually bought Newton-Aycliffe Town Centre as a whole package in 1990. A job lot. A job lot, yeah. Right. And they had bought it off another private landlord, didn't they?

10:43The Granger Trust. I looked it up and they bought Newton-Aycliffe off the Local Development Corporation in 1984, amid, it should be said, great local opposition. But why do you think they were even interested in it? And how does it fit in with their other properties in their portfolio? It was when high streets were thriving. So it probably seemed like a good investment. I mean, they also own big plush buildings in London, one called Africa House. It's a grade one listed property. Overall, in the UK and the east side of America, New York and Boston, they own, I think it's£2.6 billion worth of commercial property.

11:19How unusual is it for a private company to own a whole high street? I haven't found any other examples of one company owning an entire high street. There's plenty of examples of property firms, pension funds, other investors owning chunks of town centres, you know, a stretch of shops or what have you. But to own, I mean, not just a high street, it's not just Beveridge Way, it's the whole town centre. So it includes supermarkets, leisure centres, they own the whole lot. it's literally called Newton-Aycliffe Town Centre on their portfolio of I don't want to say it's unique but I haven't come across it before and people I was speaking to were saying yeah that is quite unusual and how well known is it among local people that their town is owned by it's essentially an absentee landlord from London it feels quite well known somewhere down near London isn't it but no one knows the identity of the company you wouldn't find any hint of it if you walk up and down Beveridge Way.

12:19So not one single person who I spoke to knew who the actual owner was. There is a sense that people, I mean, shoppers do say it's London landlords charging London rents. And they're charging London prices. Right. We're not in London. No, we're certainly not. No. You know. No. So they just can't afford to have shops. I mean, there's a lot. Is that true? From when I spoke to shopkeepers, business owners, quite a few people said they'd been paying the same rent for years and increased one owner of a business called petite boutique said she'd been paying just over 700 pound a month okay um which seems reasonable yeah but then others would say well you know they could do more to encourage businesses to come in um to empty units with cut price rates or give a peppercorn rent and you know that that kind of initiative thinking outside the box there were complaints about the state of the buildings as well a cafe that's open had really bad water damage on its roof a couple of months back the clock tower in the center of town which is quite a symbolic thing for a lot of people it's been there since i think the 70s that had to get turned off on remembrance day because it couldn't be relied on to chime on time yeah 11 o 'clock for the minute silence and then other people would point to their their lights that weren't fixed the whole place has got a bit of a a tired shabby feel to it almost like semi-abandoned yeah and what i don't understand about this is surely it's bad business for this company to have almost half of the shops in the town centre empty because it means they're not collecting rent yeah why do you think they're still holding on to these properties and just letting them decay it's quite difficult to to understand really i i can't see the benefit of them owning you know loads and loads of empty units doesn't make sense they're not getting the rents as you say i mean one factor is that you know they might have even forgotten they own it and you know newton acliffe town center is worth 3.2 million whereas you know the entire company's holding the 2.6 billion so it's 0.12 percent of the company's whole portfolio goodness so it doesn't mean that much to them they don't have to worry about its upkeep they've made a loss over the last year or two of four million pounds on newton acliffe but again that's that's nothing compared to what this company is worth i spoke to one local government expert and he said it's literally just one line on a spreadsheet for these firms and i found out that last year ben's iron fresh water and his brother solomon paid themselves 2.5 million pounds each which is nice and that actually equates to 67 times the annual salary of the average person in newton a glyph.

15:20And so you and I took the slightly drastic step of going and doorstepping this company in London to try to get some answers. And that was only after you spent months trying the slightly more modern route of email and calls. When you contacted Freshwater, What did you ask them and how did they respond? Initially, I went to them asking if they would be up for an interview just to chat about the town, why they owned it, their interest in it and why they still have it. I wasn't getting any response from them. Eventually, it got to the stage where I had to send the company a list of questions. I think there were 12 or 15.

15:59They came back and said, we don't normally do interviews for this kind of thing. So it was quite a frustrating process. I did emphasise, you know, how much people care about this town centre. It's not some kind of anonymous office block, you know, where companies can just move out and find somewhere else. It's having a real impact on people's lives, actually. And is there anything that could be done to make Freshwater a better landlord, to make them do up the properties, to maybe sell the empty ones so that somebody else can have a go at sprucing them up and bringing some life back to the town?

16:34I think what's happened up until now is local authorities have preferred to use kind of soft power. If you like, you know, get them round the table without twisting their arm, gently encourage them to, I don't know, offer reduced rents for a limited time or let community organisations, charities have it rent free for a while. And has that happened here? I don't know. It's one of the questions I asked and we haven't got an answer. But if it has happened, it hasn't worked because those companies have now gone. The government's looking to give communities more power to effectively seize control of vacant shopping units.

17:11We have a form of compulsory purchase order that they can then use it for good use, either as a temporary stopgap between permanent units or temporarily before new retailers move in. Coming up, why high streets could decide the next election.

17:44And Newton-A-Cliff is in County Durham, which is one of the 10 English local authorities that reform took over in May last year. And reform go very big, don't they, on the state of high streets. We see this every time they're campaigning at a local level or as we're seeing in by-elections, for example, like the one that's upcoming in Denton and Gorton in Greater Manchester. Yeah, that's right. I mean, Nigel Farage is constantly banging on about high streets. On his TikTok, they do incredibly good numbers for him. Turkish barbers. Oh, no, it's ridiculous, isn't it? And there's only more coming as well.

18:16Absolute racket, I would say. He'll be standing inside or outside a barbershop where he'll say it's a cash-only business with a Lamborghini out the back. You know, make that figure. So there you are. We have found a barbershop that doesn't have a Turkish sign out the front, that actually has customers and there's no Lamborghini out the back. Oh, Turkish barbershops. They have become such a focus for reform, haven't they? And always laden with innuendo that they are not just cutting hair and always ignoring the fact that actually loads of people love them, which is why there are so many of them.

18:47So reform have put this at the centre of their pledge to the nation, effectively. And what they've promised so far is to cut business rates entirely for small or medium sized businesses on the high street, which they said would be paid by abolishing the two child benefit cap. they've promised to give a big tax bung to pubs which are closing I think one a day at the minute and the power which Labour are running with to be able to block certain types of business in brackets Turkish barbers and vape shops when there's an over proliferation of them. So reform have been doing the running on this in the campaign and Labour have come out over the last two or three months to announce their own package of measures.

19:30I mean Labour are in trouble on all kinds of fronts, but how important do you think it will be for Labour if they want to try and hold on to power, that they do get a grip on what's going on with our high streets? I think high streets will be absolutely key at the next general election. It's incredibly tangible, you know, it's a real thing. People visit them or they go past them on the bus almost every day, and a real frustration when they can't buy what they think they ought to be able to buy. And there was this really interesting study by a professor called Will Jennings at the University of Southampton, did a huge poll of voters and their main concerns.

20:04And his conclusion was that Labour would effectively be washed away in a tide of discontent at the next general election unless it takes fairly drastic steps to improve town centres. I mean, this is not an entirely new issue, is it? The Tories had levelling up, which has a lot to do with town centres. But what is Labour doing? That's right, yeah. And that really didn't come to very much. But Labour, over the last couple of months, They've unveiled what they call a pride in place scheme, which feels very similar to levelling up schemes. But it gives communities powers to be able to take control of much loved assets like libraries and pubs and that kind of thing.

20:43And the money is five billion pounds spread out over the next 10, 11 years. And they hope that that will start paying dividends by the time of summer 2029, which is the latest that the next general election has to be. I tell you, if you want to know where hope lives in Britain, it's in our communities. That is where people come together. It is where you'll find our common good. What's interesting about this Pride in Place scheme, not just the fact that in introducing it, Keir Starmer used lots of patriotic language. It was clear that he was taking aim at Nigel Farage and why he was doing it effectively.

21:20Labour have been criticised for their announcements on business rates and increasing the minimum wage, which has made it harder. And the national insurance on employers, yeah. Yeah, all these things have made it harder for high street businesses. And having reported this story now, how optimistic do you feel for the future of Newton Acliffe? Do you see any hope that it could be brought back to life? Well, it's quite difficult to see hope because I think, you know, what speaks volumes is just the lack of engagement we've had from this company that owns it. and you'd think if they really care about it and they really care about the people that live there they would just answer some questions i mean what's coming down the tracks with new powers that the government have introduced could make some difference but it also depends on you know those areas having the right people to be able to pull these levers if you like more affluent places are more likely to have this kind of organized pragmatic kind of togetherness yeah So there is some worry that more deprived places will be left behind.

22:22Yeah. And just finally, what do you think society loses, that we lose, when you lose your high street? It's important for people to feel like their area is prospering. And if the high street's not prospering, I think people have a sense that the whole area is not prospering. I think high streets and town centres are like a focal point for communities to come together. Just to be there around other people I think is really, really important for people's well-being, especially older people and the different pockets where different communities will live. But town centres are that place, that kind of melting pot where it all comes together.

23:01And the fact that they are places for communities to come together in troubling times is the big thing. There's only one thing left to do. Good afternoon, Freshwater. And that is to give the billionaire brothers who own Newton-Akliftown Centre... Hoping to be able to interview Ben's Iron Freshwater. One last opportunity to answer our questions. Is there anyone else you could put me through to? Someone who works with him closely? I wouldn't know if he'd be there long. I'm sorry I wouldn't know. You wouldn't know? Okay. No. Okay. Thanks very much, Tim. Okay. Bye-bye. Bye. Yep, no answers.

24:13This is The Guardian.