Cas town centre

[cromwell]

On the cafe board I posted last week about the closure of Marks and Spencer in Castleford town centre.

Now there has been a planning application to turn the site of the town's Poundstretcher's into accomodation for "vulnerable people".
Around here that is council language for smackheads and street drinkers.
They already have one in town, now here comes another.

Honestly, I don't get it. On the one hand councils are always saying that they want to regenerate the High Street, then they move the type of people nobody wants to be anywhere near into the High Street.

They might as well knock Cas town centre down now.

[Workingman]

I once had a friend who was a social worker. Her claim was that these people needed moving out of their communities where the problem occurred to help aid their recovery.

It was a noble idea... so long as they were not moved in to her community, as was the case when the coucil tried to take over a house a few streets away under the old 'care in the community' system.

[Suff]

#1 daughter's ex partner had an alternate name for "care in the community". He called it abandonment. He was a FD in the NHS.

[TheOstrich]

Show me a town council and I'll show you a body which has absolutely no idea how to renovate a High Street.

We are currently collecting pizza outlets. We had two independent businesses, a third (run by Italians and quite reasonably priced, must try it out) opened two weeks ago, and horror of horrors, what used to be the TSB bank is soon to become a Dominoes, gawd help us. Never liked them, extortionate charges.

We are now down to just one bank branch - Lloyds. Shaftesbury has lost three of its five bank branches inside six months, leaving just Nat West and Santander. If you want a Barclays or HSBC branch, it's a minimum 50 mile round trip these days, Salisbury or Yeovil. HSBC in particular has effectively abandoned Dorset.

No homeless / vulnerable accomodation yet in town; there is a scheme to turn the old Co-op building into flats, but these appear to be (fairly) upmarket.

[cromwell]

WM, that sounds about right.
Suff, care in the community was little more than a slogan, imo.

Os, there is definitely a problem with Hight Streets.Online shopping and out of town retail parks have had a big impact. Compounded by the fact the councils now seem to be prioritising walking and cycling in town centres. Just how town centres are to be re-invigorated is a problem that our local council seems to be struggling with.

Getting people back into the town centre is a good idea, obviously. But people have cars, which councils don't want to accomodate. Plus, you have to be careful who you are bringing in to a town centre. If you people it with the "vulnerable" and asylum seekers before you know it you will have a ghetto which no one wants to be anywhere near. It's a problem. No onewants to live next to these people, for good reason, but they have to be somewhere.

The banks. I read online that inside five years there won't be any outside the cities, and I can well believe it.

Increasingly day to day shopping is vanishing from town centres. So are banks, so are police stations, so are courts.

What is going to replce them, if anything? Wakefield to be fair is having a good stab at becoming a good place to eat out. But other local towns have really gone down the swanny. Demolition would be something of a good option for parts of them, seriously.

[Suff]

In the 60's there were scheme's in Dundee where they took people out of the Tenements and put them into mid rise housing which had been so successful in Scandinavia. They broke the cohesion of families and family groups and mixed together a whole load of strangers who simply didn't mix as they would never have mixed in their prior lives. This led to nobody "owning" their community and also, because they didn't know anyone, to a rise in antisocial behaviour and crime. Something which could never have flourished before because everyone knew everyone else in the local area. Cause trouble and you would have a thick ear when you got home.

Those schemes were all demolished and replaced with low rise housing in the last two decades. Much more care has been given to who lives where and any potential disruptive elements have been separated geographically into large communities of totally normal people.

When pointing to Europe and what they do, British governments and councils fail to understand there is a culture thing going on here. Scandinavia is a very High compliance society. Like Germany their societies (in general), think that everyone doing what they are told is a good thing and that being different is antisocial. I know I've mentioned it before but all Scandinavian housing schemes have communal laundry which they papy for in their service cost and all share, booking with a lockable peg board. This is done in part because it is illegal to run a washing machine in your flat between 10pm and 7am. Literally.

Contrast Britain where we believe that rules should be a few as possible and that people should exercise good behaviour. Well at least it was when I grew up and a lot of our attitude to laws and controls revolves around it. So disruptive elements can flourish in places where they would not in European countries.

If you are caught doing more than twice the speed limit in Germany, you are liable to be referred for psychiatric counselling. Everyone in Germany that I spoke to about this thought it was a good idea. After all if you are breaking the law to that degree then there must be something wrong with your brain? Right? Now try passing that law in the UK!

Hence all these Councillors looking for "Ideas" because they, themselves, are clueless, latch onto other countries ideas with no clue as to how it will work in the UK.

Then, of course, there is the competence issue. The one thing any Councillor does not have to have is any intelligence. Charisma, yes, common sense? No. Actual acumen? NO.

Back in the 70's whilst on a summer job before going to college I worked for a garage owner in his workshop. He told me that he became a Councillor in Lincoln because he was sick and tired of the same old Labour idiots getting in and if you were not willing to stand up and serve yourself you would get whoever wanted the power.

He also told me that in one council budget meeting they signed off £3m for the roads in ten seconds. Then spent 3 hours arguing about a £75 shed!

What has changed since the 1970's? The date!

[cruiser2]

They are re-developing the centre of Wigan. Closing the market hall which was only built in 1988. There will be a hotel, bowling alley apartments and a new
market hall. It is being done by a Chinese company.
In the main street, there are four coffee shops thre eye shops a B & M and Wilko's. There are some shops in the "Grand Arcade". When it was built
Debemhams where at one end. All the mobile phone companies are in it. But there is no WH Smiths or M & S.
Thjere are posters saying the town is being re-vitalised. None of us old ones can see what it is going to acheive. Just a waste of money