“Our towns and town centres require urgent investment. Simply put, they need an annual Town Centre Regeneration Fund. However, the Government has made it very clear that this will not happen given the budgetary pressures they face. Local authorities have no choice but to navigate their own path. This does not necessitate a reversion to top-down policies that seek to homogenise our towns and town centres, however. If our towns are to reimagine their role they need alternative delivery arrangements to integrate the different interests that focus on place and embed a whole
community approach to deliver local solutions for towns.
Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, this does not require more money. Councils need to start using place-based budgets and no longer plan and spend by theme. The public pound should be
looked at in its totality if local authorities are serious about creating a unique sense of place in their towns and on the high street. This would not only see a more efficient use of public expenditure but re-energise local accountability and engagement.
Secondly, we need a “framework for mess”. Generally, local government has not been an effective mechanism for locally based, holistic interventions. By their nature, councils are risk averse, afraid of change and many do not have a structure that allows community planning to be successful or allow meaningful collaboration with the private and third sectors.
What local authorities need to do is “let go” and allow different assets and spaces to be nurtured with “light-touch” management-that is, allow communities to take responsibility for their own spaces. This would require a substantive change in the way local government thinks and operates. Rather than focusing on central control and delivery, councils would have to decentralise power and responsibility to create space for things to happen.
In removing town centres from the current systems, councils could pilot the reallocation of budgets to a designated team under new and autonomous governance structures-town teams, Super BIDS, community development trusts, BIDS and so on.
In some instances this will be easy to achieve. BIDs, for instance, are established mechanisms in regenerating town centres as are development trusts.”
Barry McCulloch and Ross Martin