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Town centre regeneration

Published: 14/04/2021

Flintshire’s Cabinet will be asked to set out a new role for the Council in regenerating town centres through property-based interventions when it meets on Tuesday 20 April.

Town centres face escalating economic challenges and the current patterns of property ownership hamper attempts to help them to adapt. The Council is developing an ambitious programme of interventions to support the reinvention and regeneration of our town centres.

There are a number of challenges facing all small towns in the UK, including:

• Changing customer behaviour, which has accelerated during the Covid pandemic, has dramatically reduced expenditure through high street shops. It is not expected that this will return fully to pre-Covid levels leaving towns with more shops than they can sustain.
• Smaller shopping centres are struggling to remain viable with considerable difficulties in attracting tenants.
• There are a small number of longer-term vacant properties in towns which can have a blighting effect on their locality. 

The intention of this forward-thinking programme is to look again at town centres and to help shape them for the future.  This will include:

• reducing the number of long-term empty properties in town centres;
• finding more sustainable uses for retail units and increase community enterprises on the High Streets;
• planning to repurpose less viable shopping centres;
• developing starter units for new retail enterprises in town centres; and
• co-ordinating and supporting all interventions with a consistent approach to ensure the regenerative effects of investment and resource are used to their maximum advantage.