£1million face-lift for UK towns centres - 06/02/2012

TV presenter and retail expert, Mary Portas, has set in motion an 'X-Factor' style competition between UK town centres - who will fight it out for a chance to win a share of a £1million grant, which will be used to regenerate high streets and city centres, courtesy of the tax payer.

The “prize money” will be shared between 12 towns, with each winner being awarded around £85,000. To be considered for the grant, town centres must “put in place a ‘town team’ consisting of local managers and business-owners or even the local MP,” reports the Telegraph. To win, they must put forward an imaginative “blueprint” for future development.

According to Portas, this is a chance for UK town centres to be re-imagined as destinations for “socialising, culture, well-being and learning as well as shopping”.

Her new project has been marked as an original and creative endeavour, giving several UK towns a much-needed face-lift, and hundreds of residents a reinvigorated sense of pride in their local area.

This new initiative comes after a provocative report by Portas released in December last year. In her report, Portas said the UK high street was nearing a “crisis point”.

Although Portas 28-point plan for high street development was initially met with great apathy by the government, the recent collapse of several high street chains has led to a change in stance. Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale was shocked by the laissez-faire attitude of the government in December. In a letter to Grant Shapps, the Local Government Minister overseeing the coalitions response to the report, he said, “Plans to respond to the Portas Review in the spring while ignoring a winter of retail insolvencies shows staggering complacency and remoteness from the reality on the high street.”

A run of high street names entering or applying to enter administration since December has spurred the government into action. Peacocks, Blacks Leisure and La Senza are just some of the high-street names to have gone into or applied to go into administration in the New Year, with HMV also planning dozens of store closures throughout 2012.

Posted by Miles Pritchard 

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