Budget:  £1 Billion for 45 towns

Quoted from TheRonRaffertyFanClub

A good part of this problem is that it is plain wrong to dictate the plan and style of a town whether Tory or Labour. It will be wrong. Some places get assimilated like Saltaire and Bournville but most attempts at super planning fail. Some people may like living in Milton Keynes but it would drive me crackers.

You have to let the place breathe and grow organically, you support the industries that will work not the ones from a political game. I know it seems unlikely now but the new ground for Town could be a great starter for growth. There are docks that just lay derelict. Look at Fleetwood, using the maritime skill base they had to transform, look at Bridlington even. We have had more than enough cash to do something but what has been done? A windswept open space for “events”, a new St James Square for night time revels.

As I said earlier a lot of the answer lies in repopulating much more of the town centre with a good mix of housing. I was hopeful Corporation Road would have been the first step years ago but it just stopped dead. Now we are fartarsing  about with repurposing falling down buildings into yoof development hubs. There are huge development opportunities all over the top town to Riby Square, Freemo and beyond.

I think town centres like ours will end up ghost towns unless we get people living there.There must be loads of potential for empty shops being converted, even the flats above these shops have been left empty for years.

Interesting piece in today’s Times about Ipswich.

“ Ipswich has unveiled its plan to become the UK’s first “15-minute” town as part of a post-pandemic push to revitalise its town centre.

It wants to use the crisis as an opportunity to reshape its high street as more of a neighbourhood than a shopping destination. That means more housing, more restaurants and more green spaces but, importantly, fewer shops.

The proposals are the latest example of how towns, cities and shopping centres are trying to rethink what they offer, as an online retail revolution pulls spending away from physical shops.

Under the plans put forward by Ipswich Central, the town’s business improvement district company, developers would be given the green light to convert disused shops and vacant buildings and there would be a drive to add more services and facilities that would encourage people to move closer to the centre of town. More pedestrian and cycle routes are planned to boost the town’s appeal, while it will open more flexible working space to try to attract some of London’s workers.

The idea is that locals living in the town centre will be able to reach everything that they need — work, shops, schools, restaurants, sports facilities and so on — within 15 minutes on foot, bike or public transport. Ipswich thinks this concept could be “firmly established” within five years.

Terry Baxter, chairman of Ipswich Central, said: “This is a bold plan which recognises that in the new, post-Covid world, our town centre will need to rely less upon retail and develop a new purpose as a place to live and visit. This new strategy for Ipswich commits to many more people living centrally and having around them all that they will need to live their lives locally.”

To help fund its regeneration, Ipswich will make use of £25 million that it received from the government’s Towns Fund this month.”




I am not saying Grimsby should copy this as a slavish model but there are ideas here that make more sense than we have seen from this council or the last one.

It’s a nice idea in principle but having the wholesale reimagining of town centres into residential areas led entirely by “developers” will not create anything resembling long term, sustainable regeneration because it’s all about the bottom line. This is why we have a housing crisis in this country, because for decades the entire approach has been about maximising profit for a small number of developers and public accountability has been stripped away at national and local level.

Now you’ve got the ridiculous situation under permitted development where retail units can be converted to residential, and all you’ll end up with is more slum housing built to the absolute minimum required standard.

The govt go through housing ministers like toilet paper so there’s no wonder there’s no joined up, long term thinking. The current HCLG minister is openly corrupt and his actions intervening in favour of billionaire developer Richard Desmond, to do the local authority out of tens of millions of pounds, shows there is no commitment to anything even resembling public benefit. The whole thing reeks.

Quoted from ska face

It’s a nice idea in principle but having the wholesale reimagining of town centres into residential areas led entirely by “developers” will not create anything resembling long term, sustainable regeneration because it’s all about the bottom line. This is why we have a housing crisis in this country, because for decades the entire approach has been about maximising profit for a small number of developers and public accountability has been stripped away at national and local level.

Now you’ve got the ridiculous situation under permitted development where retail units can be converted to residential, and all you’ll end up with is more slum housing built to the absolute minimum required standard.

The govt go through housing ministers like toilet paper so there’s no wonder there’s no joined up, long term thinking. The current HCLG minister is openly corrupt and his actions intervening in favour of billionaire developer Richard Desmond, to do the local authority out of tens of millions of pounds, shows there is no commitment to anything even resembling public benefit. The whole thing reeks.

Apart from the last para which is tangential, this why I say I don’t necessarily think that the whole idea is applicable to Grimsby . Every town/city is different so no central government planning would work.

The prerequisite is jobs and incomes. That does not just mean offices and retail. If manufacturing etc. Is stuck on the outskirts all you will do is create a rush hour away from the town centre. One other point, if we look at most large towns/cities they were originally conurbations of smaller villages each with its own town centre. Scartho and Waltham are about the last examples in Grimsby. Noticeably these suffer on smaller scale the same problems of top Town. We should look at supporting the small businesses there and make those centres thrive.

You might say it’s tangential, I’d say is emblematic of the public sphere which shapes the entire country. The built environment is a reflection of the country on a broader scale in terms of economic and social values. Towns and cities don’t grow independently of each other  or exist in a vacuum - and what we’re seeing now is the impact of the atomisation of many aspects of life, which were reflected in the urban fabric, for the benefit of a small number of hyper-capitalist, service & finance focussed cities and mega cities.

Ska is right. We’ve gone from a mixed economy approach to free market capitalism to croney capitalism in the last 40 odd years.

Quoted from ska face

Now you’ve got the ridiculous situation under permitted development where retail units can be converted to residential, and all you’ll end up with is more slum housing built to the absolute minimum required standard.

If this was any more ‘true’ you would be paying royalties to Spandau Ballet.

I don’t know what the answer is but it’s not the relaxation of planning laws purely for profit.