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Town Centre Regeneration plans

Published: 12/10/2022

Flintshire’s Cabinet will be asked to note positive progress being made on town centre regeneration in Flintshire when it meets later this month.

Smaller town centres across the United Kingdom have been facing challenging economic circumstances for many years due to changing customer behaviours.

The pandemic accelerated these trends and we need to look at ways of “future proofing” our towns by bringing empty properties back into use and creating more sustainable use for them.

Although Flintshire town centres have not been immune to this process, the loss of major national chains and the increase in vacant floor space has not been as significant an issue as in other areas.  However, the closure high street banks has been more significant in a number of Flintshire towns. This has, in turn, impacted on the scale and vitality of the street markets in the County.

Flintshire’s approach to town centre regeneration was approved in May 2021 and great strides have been made since then, including starting work to develop a plan for seven town centres based on the Welsh Government Place Plans initiative launched in May this year.  This initiative will see funding available for town centres with a Place Plan.  Each town is unique and identifying priorities for each town is key and each plan will take around six months to complete.

Flintshire’s Cabinet Member for Climate Change and Economy, Councillor David Healey, said:

“These are ambitious plans for our towns and we have capacity to develop two or three at any one time.  We are recommending that towns be reviewed in three phases, with potentially the first phase looking at areas which already have established priorities and where future investment could be at risk if a Place Plan is not developed as a priority.”

Welsh Government has also introduced an Empty Property Enforcement Programme.  Funding is also available for this initiative and Cabinet will be asked for approval to move forward on this, based on a number of criteria. 

Councillor Healey added:

“The criteria include questions around the length of time the property has been empty and whether advice has been given to the owner already.  Bringing empty properties back into use is key to regenerating a town centre and any work done will be handled sensitively and confidentially to ensure the best possible outcome is achieved.”