Chamber campaigns for planning changes to boost town centres and levelling up
Date published:
North East England Chamber of Commerce has set out a series of recommendations to help town centre regeneration in a letter to Government.
The letter to Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, calls for a reform of planning and local authority powers. Among the changes suggested are specialist support for planning departments to supplement often depleted in-house expertise post-austerity and tackling absent landlords.
Rachel Anderson, Chamber assistant director of policy said: “We urge Government to our proposals which would go some way to help our town centres to recover from the devastating challenges left by the pandemic lockdowns. It would also play a part in Government’s ambition to level up the country, ensuring the region’s potential for growth is exploited fully.”
The Chamber campaign also recommends large scale planning changes specifically for town centres to allow greater flexibility to regenerate them with housing developments, for example. It also stresses smaller measures could boost their economies like simplified shop front rules for start-ups, the creation of small workspaces and workshops to encourage local artisans.
This letter is a result of the Chamber’s town centre working group’s activity. The group supports the delivery of the Dynamic North East theme in the Chamber’s Stronger North East campaign. It also builds on the Chamber’s past work with Lichfields which made a series of suggestions to create vibrant town centres by exploiting their unique selling points and becoming hubs for a range of community uses rather than just retailing.
A full copy of the letter is attached here.