Is town centre renewal possible in these austere times?
Last week I was lucky to take a one-day tour of Lincolnshire town centres. This taught me lessons and identified issues that have wider meaning for cash-strapped communities in need of renewal.
The situation facing rural Lincolnshire town centres like Sleaford, Gainsborough and Boston will be familiar to many small towns across the UK. They are isolated and have limited services (from dentists to cinemas). Their High Streets are struggling to compete with out-of-town and on-line. They are in need of renewal. It was reinforced to me how that the part of the world that gave rise nearly four centuries ago to the Pilgrim Fathers, is struggling to adapt to its first wave of mass migrants in modern times. In part, austerity is nothing new to these town centres. They have been side-lined in the national economy for decades. They have though had to develop a spirit of self-reliance from within. My visit gave me insights in to community leadership and ingenuity that offer optimism of renewal even in austerity.
Animation and promotion
I experienced the importance of maintaining even modest commitments to animating rural town centres and how these can in-part be funded by business subscriptions. Across Lincolnshire, the Chamber of Commerce employs a team of part-time town managers who also liaise with members. Lincoln BID was there representing the more bustling county town and showing a spirit of cooperation in coordinating promotions with its smaller satellite town centres. I saw the value of mutual support at a quarterly gathering with inspiring ideas shared for promotions and events.
The cost and benefits of town centre Christmas festivities was a recurring theme. This is an issue I will continue to share with other towns as part of good practice on event planning and tracking town trends. As one Cheshire town council recently put it to me: How can we know if £19,000 spent on lights and market stalls brings a good return? Isn’t it a little perverse that when the lights are on in town centres, for the most part the businesses are closed? I also volunteered myself to investigate funding opportunities for towns from the re-launched LEADER programme. Insights and positive tips welcome, please.
Strategic planning and investment
In the afternoon I enjoyed a tour of key development sites in and around Sleaford town centre. This brought home the value and challenges of long-term master-planning and strategy in the renewal of town centres. A massive town-edge complex of redundant maltings that would be bijou apartments if further south; congested roads likely to be worsened by level crossing delays; a potential business development site released by Tesco and a cluster of listed buildings near the market square that are ripe for a new role.
Recession and austerity has meant that the maths of commercially underpinning these multi-million pound schemes is more challenging at a time when public funds are not available to ‘pump-prime’. Joined-up thinking, engagement, local leadership, continued tenacity and fleet of foot are all the more important now. There is now time for a brief pause to broker community cohesion around these big opportunities. Then joined-up strategy and support is needed for the chance of renewal to be taken. Council economic development and finance directors in this and other towns will need to be thinking in-terms of investment instead of subsidy. They will have to embrace new models to achieve this such as the recently heralded ‘Town Centre Investment Zones’.
Learning
My day of learning in Lincolnshire re-enforced that austerity makes continued promotion and renewal of our town centres both more necessary and more challenging. A switch to embrace commercial funding to both animate and invest in structural change, might just deliver sustainable progress and new life for our town and city centres. This work has not got any easier but there are many tenacious types out there to learn from. Please let us know your take on this and what you’re learning about countering these challenging times.
To read a synopsis of our approach at People and Places to ‘Creating Talented Teams’ visit our Specialities page.
To understand the role of data in driving town centre priorities, read how our regional ‘Survey Points to to Need for Evidence‘.
And to find out whether Town Centre Investment Zones might be the big idea your to unlock potential in your town centre read our recent blog ‘Investment or Vested Interests‘.
We’d love to read your comments below or even visit your town. Sign up to our newsletter for regular updates through our ‘Keep in Touch‘ page. There is so much knowledge to share!
– Chris Wade, Director, The People and Places Partnership
