{"id":1504,"date":"2013-11-30T09:07:58","date_gmt":"2013-11-30T09:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abbeylandsresidents.org.uk\/?p=1504"},"modified":"2014-02-19T00:32:41","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T00:32:41","slug":"another-town-centre-action-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourlocality.org\/abbeylands\/another-town-centre-action-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Action : Reaction – another town centre action plan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"towncentreactinplan\"<\/a>It is perhaps not surprising that the Scottish Government’s response to Malcolm Fraser’s Town Centre recommendations<\/a> is short on on easy answers, as the problems it tackles are quite complex – some say irresolvable, but it is commendably brief.<\/p>\n

The predictable rhetoric is all there in the Minister’s opening remarks:- \u00a0“all directorates have been actively engaged, identifying the relevant policies, programmes and strategies which support and put in place the conditions for the recommendations to be delivered locally and to assist local action.” I should hope so too. But I hope that we don’t have a boring bureaucratic response in the shape of The Regeneration Unit, simply co-ordinating activity by spreadsheet and action plan.\u00a0The language of partnership, empowerment and participation have\u00a0pervaded public policy under successive governments, so it is easy to get jaded. I am not alone in thinking that all this \u2018joined up thinking’ is more like ‘stitched up thinking\u2019 and subverting the democratic process with a new managerialism.<\/p>\n

Perhaps a bit too brief, at just 9 pages, and a bit too hermetic even for me – betraying a rush to get it out rather than get it right, it is unclear at this stage exactly how the initiatives and changes will combine to have any sort of synergistic effect.<\/p>\n

In its favour it is not as flawed as the retailer-biased Portas Review, which lacked the sort of independence you would expect from a Government directed review. In more ways than one the hegemony of the big retailers maybe over (as they move online and offshore their profits), but this has left a yawning gap in thinking.<\/p>\n

Also on the plus side it doesn’t mention that old regeneration canard – car parks, I guess because metropolitan Malcolm is unequivocally in favour of walkability and has done his homework and knows that people who walk are healthier, happier, spend more time and money locally. Can we learn from Denmark?<\/p>\n

All eyes are really on the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill<\/a>. Will town centres get useful additional powers? There’s a hint of this, except that we know that there’s cross party support for localism and devolving more powers and budgets to communities, articulating that wonderful European notion of subsidiarity. In case you’ve not been paying attention it should contain – among other things …<\/p>\n