Andy Burnham’s approach will be judged not by Westminster headlines but on Yorkshire high streets - Kim Samuel

Walking down the high street of almost any Yorkshire town and you can see how much has changed. The shops that once felt woven into the identity of the region - Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, and BHS - are gone. Independent businesses are sadly disappearing too.

It’s not simply about shops opening and closing. The places that once felt rooted in community life have closed their doors, and not been replaced. The places where you'd bump into a neighbour, where the landlord or shop worker would greet you by your name, where towns had unique characteristics. The conduits of everyday moments that build a sense of belonging.

While this is a national problem, the north-east of England and Yorkshire have been the worst-hit regions for independent business closures in recent years.

So, when the Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced that councils will have powers to stop betting and vape shops taking over high streets, he was naming something Yorkshire has been experiencing for years: that decisions about our neighbourhoods are being made for us, not with us, and it’s time to change that.

This is why the announcement caught my attention. It's not really about betting shops. It's about who decides what gives your high street its heart and soul - and whether it has places people actually need and use. It’s about what happens when we lose the places that give communities their own identity, their own shared physical spaces where people connect, their own sense of ownership over the neighbourhood they call home.

For years, political debate has measured progress through numbers. Rate of inflation. Waiting lists. Housing targets. Measuring material progress is profoundly important - it tells us a lot about what is going well, and the pressures people are facing.

But alone, without being rooted in lived experience, they cannot tell us about the health of a community and how connected people are.

They cannot capture what it feels like when the local pub closes. When children have nowhere safe to play. When fees for your elderly relatives' care home go up, again. When you believe every decision about your neighbourhood is made somewhere else by someone you'll never meet.

This is why equal importance needs to be placed on understanding whether people are safe, valued and able to shape the future of the places they call home. These would not replace economic measures, but instead help us understand whether people have the power to build strong communities of their own.

This is of critical importance now. Our 2026 Belonging Barometer found two in five people, 39 per cent, feel less connected to Britain than at the beginning of the decade. Almost three in five, 58 per cent, said the cost-of-living crisis made it harder to build connection and community. These numbers point to something deeper than loneliness. They describe an erosion of the relationships and shared spaces that hold communities together.

The Shambles in York and Skipton High Street are world renowned because the people who live and work there shaped them. They are reminders of what can happen when communities breathe character and life into the place they live and love.

The Prime Minister’s announcement on reducing betting and vape shops says something important: that he wants more towns to have that unique character. That communities should have a voice in shaping their neighbourhoods.

But this has to mean more than planning decisions about which shops can open.

Real devolution cannot mean just passing responsibility from Whitehall to City Hall in London. It must transfer the money and authority needed to act. The power cannot stop with regional institutions, it has to reach communities themselves. People need a genuine role in decisions about housing, transport, work, public spaces and care.

Andy Burnham’s first speech as Prime Minister spoke directly to that distance between national politics and everyday life.

The commitments and the emergence of No10 North point towards those at the height of power recognising that change must be seen, felt and shaped in the places where people actually live.

Belonging forms locally – through the people you know, the places you share, your chance to contribute something. But it requires power. A genuine voice and agency in decisions that affect their, their families, friends, neighbours, and future generations lives.

A new approach to politics is welcome, but it will be judged not by Westminster headlines but on Yorkshire high streets. In the library and the park. Around kitchen tables. In care homes. In whether communities actually have a say in what happens next.

The Prime Minister has set out a political project centred on rebuilding place as much as growing the economy. He's recognised that Britain's challenge isn't just economic. It's a crisis of belonging.

Kim Samuel is the founder of the Belonging Forum.