The interesting aspect of the recent announcement for the Visitor Levy in England, is not the decision made that it is going ahead -that’s been a foregone conclusion since last year’s Budget. The key decisions are the ones still to be made by Strategic Authorities about how they will be making the most of the…
At the People & Places Partnership we have been working carefully over the last year to piece together a place policy checklist. Our aim is to help guide council, community and commercial place partners through the raft of new national policy initiatives in a way that can help apply them to their neighbourhood, town or…
The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act has become law and provides measures for new devolved powers, parishes and parking rules. Community Right To Buy The Act introduces a new Community Right to Buy will give local people the first right of refusal for valued community assets such as shops and community centres when they…
A new baseline review & action plan has been produced for Hereford city centre following a three-month research and consultation process aimed at improving Hereford’s look and feel for residents, businesses and visitors. The city centre action planning process has been being carried out by the People & Places Partnership on behalf of Hereford City Council,…
We are excited to share that we have brought together Australian and United Kingdom know-how, to create a pilot course for boosting ‘pride in place’ in neighbourhoods, towns and city centres. And like all good community participation, we are inviting existing and would-be placemakers and managers from communities, councils and commercial interests to help…
The Streets Ahead report published by the Royal Society of Public Health seeks to provide guidance and recommendations for “building health on the high street”. As a specialised report, it is remarkably striking in the synergy it shows with wider approaches to revitalising town and city centres. The steps that the Streets Ahead report by…
I believe that everyone has at least one culinary cultural tale inside them. Some, have many more. Such tales often begin with something like, “If you go into city centre, make sure you get something to eat at…” Put the tales together and we start to create a city’s culinary cultural story book. Food as…
Amongst the many performance measures to be expected in the ‘post-programme findings of the High Streets Task Force’, I was most interested to read and understand the final section titled ‘legacy’. This concluding section of the report published recently by the Institute of Place Management (IPM), presents suggestions for long-term learning and impact by presenting…
What should we read into signs of the government’s place-based approach increasingly focusing policy on neighbourhood renewal? This March saw the publication of two key pointers to such a government focus on addressing decline at the ‘neighbourhood’ level. The rebranding of the Long Term Plan for Towns to the Plan for Neighbourhoods, was accompanied by…
It’s January 2030 and how have external perceptions of Bradford changed? More importantly is there a palpable sense of greater community cohesion and local ‘pride in place’. Bradford has boldly stepped into the national spotlight as U.K. City of Culture for 2025, though this is only part of wider ambitions to evolve the ‘look…