Understanding the challenges facing town centres

Great work by members of the team in Tamworth on a recent project to address the barriers preventing high street investment and diversification in Tamworth.

While the award of £21.65 million from the Future High Street Fund will undoubtedly deliver big physical improvements, there are still cultural challenges that need to be addressed and this was the focus of our work.

Strengthening relationships between elected members and businesses through councillor training around the needs of small businesses, accelerating a shift towards food and drink, creating a comprehensive events calendar and fostering a healthy start-up culture through a ‘test-bed town’ model of experimentation and lower entry costs were among some of our recommendations.

While everyone welcomes the £11billion being invested by government in physical infrastructure changes on high streets, it’s essential that this is accompanied by cultural changes that prioritise people, partnerships and communities.  

We are delighted that our recommendations have been featured as a case study by the Local Government Association. You can learn more here:  https://lnkd.in/dHnzimvd

We visualised our findings in a visual story map which was a prototype and due to the very positive feedback we will be including this in future projects.