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I am not the man for the Planning job. My first action would be to seek the urgent removal and demolition of Tesco's. They, single handledly are destroying the very fabric of our town centre; there is no competing with them. They have been the same since their very early days and the "stack 'em high and sell 'em cheap" was specifically aimed at destroying the competition. Nothing has changed 35 years on. They are a blight on every town centr they are close too. Nothing will flourish until they are gone. But, should that most unlikley of things happen, we lose the jobs they bring.
Sadly, we are beyond the point of return and I suspect Asda finally realised as much.
However, if we drop regeneration of the town centre as the main aim and look to a liesure complex similar to Ashford there may be hope, not much at the speed we move, but some possibly.
I like the Lanes idea, but how would the traders survive when most of their customers choose the Whitfield TC Killer store first? We are not Brighton and don't have either the local population or influx of tourists to keep such a retail area alive. There is nothing to attract people here in the winter, so traders would hav to compete with Tesco and still be able to afford 6 months of near total shut-down, AND stil pay excessive business rates.
I could go on, but this will do for now.