Is our town a shithole..

@TheignT that is actually good practice- if you build shared ownership or over 55 rental flats reasonably central you keep younger and older people shopping centrally, this in turn attracts better businesses so higher footfall , and it is then self perpetuating, more income so often better kept towns- . Personally I would restrict out of town retail parks but bring in new central car parks that are decent quality, monitored and cheap -offer inducements to the usual retail park suspects to be central - lower business rates etc -

https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP

Tom Hayes MP is proposing an amendment whoch is designed to force planning authorities to consider sufficient play provision. The thinking behind this is that our towns and communities should be designed for all of us to use, not just handed over to developers or left derelict for the groups of men that people on this thread find so off-putting. I think, sadly, it’s clear that retail isn’t going to be the force that revitalizes towns. But there are other ways to being positive constructive social activities into our shared spaces. Please email your MP, ask them to vote for this amendment, and ask them what they are doing towards making our shared town areas pleasant places for all. https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3946/stages/19961/amendments/10023777

Rioters riot in their own town (apart from the professional rioters who go wherever they’re ‘needed’). It never makes much sense to me that people destroy the place they live in.

Do people honestly believe redeveloping town centre shops into housing will help with this?

There a quango doing flats above shops in town up for buying/renting - if you are near station it's very commutable to several large cities - that means there is a bigger young population in center to frequent the remaining shops.

There has also been some private developemnt of fancy block of flats in center with parking - seems to have done okay place seems to have sold/rented all the flats.

This pretty much is the set up here - and frankly increasingly like it where DH grew up.

There is some serious money here and rest has some really poor areas with drug problems. We in a rare stable working/middle class enclave - not enough income for better secondary but decent houses and near shops, countryside and easy road commutes. The secondary school does pull this area down -primaries are good - it's decliend decade ago many move here as it was improving rapdily.

Most of the work here and town where DH grew up is in nearby cities - just house prices are too high - so people do waht we did come here and commute. It's a rare area with high fertilty in area with below Uk average as house prices are still okay though rapidly rising.

People tend to go to other centers or out of town places rather than center here - and there is less and less to draw people back into this center and more and more to keep them away.

What's happened in my town is some shops have closed, the redevelopment is flats, some for supported living for pensioners. On the ground floor new small shop units, coffee shop and a nice seating area. The flats provide customers for the shops so more shoppers around in the town centre and yes bigger shops have gone but opportunity for some specialist shops and local branch of a big supermarket. It seems to be working well.

I know this will go down like a lead balloon but...

Every time we get time off, the automatic instinct is to escape—book flights, spend big abroad, and get away from our everyday surroundings.

We pour our hard-earned money into other countries' economies while local services struggle, high streets fade, and public spaces decline. What if, instead of always trying to get away, we invested in making the places we live actually worth staying in?

A cultural shift fund or initiative where, instead of a holiday abroad, people contribute part of that money to local services, community projects, green spaces, and cultural activities. What if we built the kind of towns and cities we didn’t feel the need to run from?
We’ve normalised escape, but maybe transforming what’s around us—supporting local businesses, improving public areas, and helping to shape thriving, connected communities, who enjoy where they live.

A pipe dream but one I think about a lot.

Do people honestly believe redeveloping town centre shops into housing will help with this? Doing that will irreversibly shutdown any hope of rebuilding walkable cities/towns and entrench the current issues. We only have to look at the US to see how that will turn out.

That's really sad.

My town is a very old one, has loads of historic buildings, and the entire town centre is a conservation area, with the strict planning controls that come with that. Although a lot of new homes have been built, they are "pepper-potted" around, with lots of small developments. And it's in a national park, so very hard to get permission to build beyond the existing town boundaries. I can't think of a single new development beyond those boundaries in the 30+ years I've lived here.

And not only do we have riverside walks, you can walk the whole 42 mile length of it, from the source to the sea.

I feel very privileged, but it comes at a price. You'd be lucky to find a 2-bedroomed house for less than £400k. The cheapest property on Rightmove at the moment is a 1-bed flat at £170k.

@newhouseplans

I don't doubt the underlying issues are connected to so many years of Tory austerity and to Brexit. And to the financial burden of bailing out the banks after the last crash, and of Lizz Truss's catastrophic short time as PM. And now a Labour leader with no vision or solid ideas how to solve it.

Seaside towns like my home town were "dumping grounds" for such people LONG before Tory austerity and Brexit. It can be traced right back to the mid 80s. I was in the police during the mid 80s, and we were seeing it every time we did foot patrols (remember them!). Whole blocks of boarding houses in one end of our seaside resort started to be occupied by newly released prisoners and other "problems" from bigger cities. You could almost see the deterioration progress every week. More and more drug dealing, drunkeness, flat fires, vandalism, theft, fighting, etc. When I first started, we did solo foot patrols, but by the time I left (escaped), it was compulsory to work in pairs as the streets were getting dangerous, and that's 40 years ago!

I've no doubt that Brexit, the 2008 financial crash, austerity, etc have made things worse in more areas, but we really have to go further back to see when it first started. Of course, few people were affected by it back then - it was only seaside resorts and ex-industrial areas, so all those in "naice" areas showed no interest at all.

I think this is why there's finally a lot more attention to the problem! My home town became a shithole in the 90s when the seaside trade had long gone, attractions closed (meaning no day trippers either), and the council filled the empty boarding houses by bussing in "Problem" people from other areas, such as newly released prisoners, but put nothing in place to support them, employ them, etc. It was entirely foreseeable that putting people into areas with little employment and few amenities that they wouldn't be "rehabilitated" and become worthy working members of society! No one listened then.

Now that the contagion is spreading to towns which had remained "naice" over the past couple of decades, people are finally talking about it and wanting action. Shame that those in "naice" areas didn't show any interest when it was seaside resorts, and ex-industrial towns that were in massive difficulties. Now it's spreading and literally "coming to a town near you", more and more people are seeing it for themselves and suffering the consequences.

It's been clear for 2 or 3 decades that town centres needed to be remodelled and redeveloped with the shops closing down and remaining empty. Yet successive governments have kicked the problem into the long grass. They've relied on property developers to buy and renovate the properties that could make them a killing by conversion to "posh" flats or student lettings. Nothing was done about all the properties that the developers didn't want, which continue to lay empty and deteriorate, being a blight on the High Street!

Local and national politicians have turned a blind eye to it all which is in itself a national disgrace. But now it's so widespread, they can't ignore it any longer, and, in part, it's why Farage and Reform have become so popular. Boris was popular when he said he was going to "level up" such areas, but sadly, as history proves, he could talk the talk but didn't walk the walk!

For 2/3 decades, the only "investment" in such areas was stupid expensive statues or other artworks in the middle of roundabouts funded by the EU. These areas needed jobs, they needed town centre redevelopment - stupid expensive statues don't do anything for those unemployed or minimum wage workers who can't afford their utility bills nor food!

There's a lot of nihilism among parts of society who feel they have nothing positive to live for or work towards. If you have some or all of: no education, loads of family trauma, complex mental health issues, addictions, and no prospect of any work above minimum wage, it's very hard to feel why you should buy into civic norms. The oblivion of drugs or drink, or the catharsis of smashing things, become much more appealing when you feel you have nothing constructive to live for.

never seen a policeman or woman on the street in the last 5 years. The local police station is open 3 days a week 9-12 noon 😱

Blimey, I thought ours was bad, but it's open 10-2, Mon-Fri.

You almost never see a copper on the street (although there are a couple pf PCSOs that I see from time to time), but as the force HQ is in my town, you see loads in Tesco around lunchtime, picking up sandwiches for their lunch.

Having said that, it's a low crime area compared to the bigger towns in the force area (two counties and a city), especially the coastal towns, so it makes sense for them to be deployed elsewhere.

Maybe in some areas. But the damage to smaller/local shops were the supermarkets and retail parks of the 80s, 90s, and 00s. It's very noticeable that the towns which are still looking "prosperous" with a variety of shops are the ones that are nowhere near big out of town retail parks/supermarket sites. Along with anti-car councils, they've sucked the life out of the town centres, but lots of town centres muddled on as best they could.

Then along came internet shopping which has been the fail nail in the coffin over the past decade or two and which is now harming the out of town retail parks and big supermarkets too! Seeing "Big box" units on retail parks empty is something we've not seen previously until the last few years - THAT's the Amazon effect.

In fact, Amazon and other online shopping channels may well be helping lots of the smallest of businesses, such as small specialist shops, smaller manufacturers/distributors, etc., as huge numbers of them are using "Fulfilled by Amazon" where Amazon hold their stock and deal with the packing and delivery etc. There are also lots of other "fulfilment" firms which small businesses are using to hold and deliver their stocks if the business has it's own website or other e-commerce channel. Ironically, the internet may well prove to be the saviour of the smallest of businesses and they can compete against the big firms on a national scale, which is something small shops couldn't do when their competition was a retail park or a huge Tesco Extra with a free car park!

My town is the same, it’s awful and depressing. The situation for mine is due to an influx of migrant men involved in criminal activity to make money. You can’t do anything about it or talk about it as you get called racist.

It sucks for us who live with it but we can’t offend the elites who live in nice areas and hate us plebs.

Ours has always been a bit of a shithole but it now seems a lot of what I thought were nice places have caught up.

I noticed the noise levels started up at the time of Covid, in fact a lot of bad behaviour started then. People at home not knowing how to entertain themselves looked outwards at others and became nasty. And intrusive. It’s stayed that way. Hell in a hand-basket,

@OooPourUsACupLove It's not complicated. In real terms councils have less money per person than they did.

That will be fixed in the Autumn when "Rachel from Accounts" will be allowing Councils to hike the Council Tax up 🙄
Here it's going up 5%, some areas will have higher rises.

Seems a bit incongruous with our illustrious leader's promise "we will not tax working people"...🙄

My midlands town is exactly as you describe. DD is at uni in Leeds and we have noticed the stark contrast - she doesn't want to come home.

Unlike pp, the majority are middle aged local men. I've said I won't be getting another dog once mine passes, as I don't feel safe on walks anymore.

I'd also like to add about the constant anti social noise. It's like everyone is active 24/7 with bikes and car revving all night and power tools constantly going.

Life is loud and overwhelming.

I live in a city in South Yorkshire and there are parts of the city like this but have been for a number of years. A lot of unemployed men /asylum seekers hanging around. I do avoid those areas

Isn’t this just broken windows theory writ large? Public budget cuts mean public spaces aren’t being maintained/policed adequately and this eventually compounds into more serious issues.

There’s a big need to shrink shopping zones and build more homes or convert buildings to homes. However some people don’t look after anything. That’s not the fault of councils.

It’s also a fact that higher earners pay the most tax. By a long way. Too many don’t pay for much at all but consume the resources paid for by others. Over taxing and not appreciating the contribution high earners make gets us nowhere. We need more high earners. Not less.

There are more street drinkers and people obviously sleeping rough in the centre of our town.

I know where many of them came from - our nearest city dumps large numbers of homeless people in hotels in our town.

Initially the city just started doing it with no discussion, so large numbers of people with complex needs were appearing in our town totally unsupported.

The two councils are at least talking now but it's still a huge burden on services in the town and it feels unfair on everyone for the city to literally dump people with issues on us.

I don't doubt the underlying issues are connected to so many years of Tory austerity and to Brexit. And to the financial burden of bailing out the banks after the last crash, and of Lizz Truss's catastrophic short time as PM. And now a Labour leader with no vision or solid ideas how to solve it.

Tragically, many local people are convinced all problems are to do with immigration however, and are going to vote for Reform, who will undoubtedly make it worse, should they achieve any real power.

Council is changing high street to more of residential area now… more flats instead of shops