Turley Associates

Comment – Beyond Retail: Redefining the shape and purpose of town centres

A recently published report by the Distressed Town Centre Property Taskforce, set up following Portas Review, has made a series of recommendations to help revive and reinvent town centres. The Task Force is made up of representatives of the banking, retail and public sectors and focuses on the positive and negative role that property ownership, investment, development and occupation can have on town centre viability.

The Report, ‘Beyond Retail: Redefining the shape and purpose of town centres’ sets out nine recommendations covering the following:

• Strong and dynamic leadership at the local authority level working with businesses and communities
• Bold and strategic land assembly including use of compulsory purchase powers
• Greater flexibility in the planning system to allow quick and easy changes of use for redundant premises
• New funding mechanisms including the use of Tax Increment Financing (TIF)
• Improved local authority resourcing facilitated through greater use of shared services
• Amendments to the National Planning Policy Guidance to strengthen the ‘town centre first’ approach, clarifying the issues of suitability, availability and viability of town centre sites
• Adapting and taking advantage of technology to improve synergy with online shopping trends
• Review of the business rates system
• Commitment by the industry to a new valuation system for retail property

Adrian Fox, Head of Retail Assessment at Turley Associates, said:

“Most of the report’s recommendations are welcome, particularly in relation to greater flexibility for changes of use and revisions to the business rates system. There is an appreciation that town centres need to evolve to reflect changing circumstances in the retail sector. The report rightly recognises the importance of the retail core of town centres should be protected, however recognises the need that an encouragement of a variety of uses to underpin their long-term success will become increasingly important. The report highlights that for individual town centres to be successful it will be critical for local authorities, working in partnership with the private sector and neighbouring authorities, to establish commercially realistic strategies for individual centres. In recognition of the need to plan for town centres in the long term, in order to deliver a real ‘step change’ to the role and function of town centres, the report recommends that when assessing the impact of new retail development the time horizon should be extended to look up to ten years ahead alongside the more established five year period commonly applied. Such a recommendation acknowledges that new development has a longer settling in period in terms of assessing retail impact”.

Download the report.

Barry Cansfield
Director
020 7851 4010
[email protected]

Adrian Fox
Head of Retail Assessment
020 7851 4021
[email protected]