Imagine refurbished, heritage buildings on your high street that are owned and occupied by community enterprises, provide important services, attract footfall and contribute proactively to the wider reshaping and image of your town or city centre. That is the prospect that the Government is looking to support through recent legislation in the English Devolution and…
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…
When the House of Lords Built Environment Committee published the results of its 9-month inquiry into high streets in towns and small cities at the end of November, my immediate reaction was, “What difference will it make at street level?”. Local leadership and empowered partnerships This is not stated as a criticism of the Lords’…
At the People & Places Partnership, we pride ourselves on finding solutions to pressing problems identified by stakeholders. So great to have residents’ common calls for diversifying town centre retail, business and services, so neatly addressed in this new guide to Tackling High Street Vacancy, published as a last act of the High Streets Task…
Guest blog about teamwork tackling empty shops, by Iain Nicholson MIPM, founder of The Vacant Shops Academy. Why don’t you set a target of reducing high street vacancy in your town or city centre by half in 18 months? Impossible…? What if you learned – as you will from the accompanying ‘Tackling High Street Vacancy’…
From sifting through ministerial contributions to a House of Lords Inquiry, our conclusion is that Stevenage may hold the key for predicting government high street policy for years ahead. It helps that one of the two ministers answering questions at last week’s session of the high streets in towns and small cities inquiry, was Baroness Taylor…
As part of People & Places’ wider work to help councils and communities revitalise town centres, here we provide updates about a top local concern -retaining the right to bank on your High Street. This article offers a round-up of recent moves to safeguard town centre banking services, including proposals produced this week by the…
Whilst many aspects of proposed new legislation set-out in this year’s King’s Speech will impact indirectly on place, we single-out three proposed Bills likely to have the most direct impacts. In short these proposed impacts can be summarised as building homes; devolving budgets and making buses better. The narrative below is taken directly from the…
Three of my favourite town centre regeneration projects tick all the right boxes as successful examples of the art of asset-based development. The Number 8 Community Arts Centre, Pershore; The Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal and Galeri Caernarfon are all iconic buildings that earn their keep within their towns; all are community-owned and managed; all provide…
It was great to see one of my favourite town centre-based community enterprises announced this week as one of 12 worthy beneficiaries of the expansion of the Architectural Heritage Fund’s Heritage Development Trusts model. Galeri Caernarfon Since it was formed in 1992, a key role of Galeri Caernarfon has been to buy old, derelict and…