What's going to happen to our small towns?

[Confettishower]

I live in the small market town that I grew up in. As a child and teenager our town was thriving. My parents owned a small business and it was always busy. We had a market day on a Thursday which coincided with the livestock market. Buses would come from the villages and other towns and it would be packed. The market stretched up the entire length of the high street and spilled into the surrounding street .

My brother is here to visit at the moment, he hasn't been for a while as he lives abroad. He is so shocked at the state of the town. Last week on Market day there were 4 very sad looking stalls. Half the shops are empty but we have quite a few charity shops and a disproportionate amount of barbers. We have a big problem with anti-social behaviour and teenagers at the moment but actually there is nothing for them to do. There is a skate park full of people smoking weed and that's it. No amenities or youth clubs. No sports clubs left for kids as the facilities are poor so people take them elsewhere. There is a swimming pool which has very limited availability - it was taken over by serco from the LA and they can barely staff it. There used to be an outdoor pool which was packed for the entire summer but they got rid of that.

There are a couple of big employers in the town but they are not aspirational, more minimum wage type factory work. The GP practice is on its knees and the local secondary school is currently RI and has been for 6 years. Those who can seem to elect to send their kids on buses to schools in other surrounding towns. There are no public transport links anywhere though. To get to a train station you would have to drive 25 minutes or do a 50 minute bus journey. And yet they seem to keep building more and more houses. However they're on the edge of town and seemingly a large amount of people just bypass the town itself and again use other local towns with more leisure facilities and things going on.

It has actually made me really sad and for the first time I'm really considering moving away. There is nothing for our DC here. They wouldn't want to move back here (we did to stay near family) but they won't have the same opportunities that we did even 20 years ago. What is going to happen to towns like ours? Are they just going to steadily die out and essentially become a large housing estate? What can we do to stop the rot?

Our town centre is packed, weekends nightmare to park. People shopping, eating. Cinema and bowling. It's definitely busy.

MintJulia your area sounds great!

Exactly, not all shopping. That’s exactly the point I was making. I’ve lived just outside of two market towns for the past 15 years. They were filled with Next, M & Co, Edinburgh Woollen Mill, Mothercare, etc. Most have now gone into administration or closed. Because people can shop in those same places online.

But we have great cafes, an independent cinema, restaurants and pubs, a few independent sweet shops and bakeries. These are doing well. It’s about making towns a place to go for the day and do things. Not just go to Boots or H & M.

It's all very well having lots of cafes, restaurants and cinemas but small towns need employers to provide jobs which then provide people with money to spend on this stuff. It's ok if you're in a commuter town, as money is earned elsewhere and there's plenty of it sloshing about. My nearest town is in rural Lincolnshire. During the economic fiasco of 2008 our factories all shut down and nothing has replaced those jobs. The town is in a downward spiral. It's really noticeable when you visit other market towns that have a reason for people to go there - thry might not be as wonderful as they were, but they are surviving. No-one has a reason to visit my nearest town and it's dying. It's really sad.

Just wanted to add to this that our small market town has gone this way - over the last 6 months - the last main bank closed down, the local newspaper was sold and the shop closed, also quite a few hairdressers and small cafe's but those tend to close down regularly when they can't make profits. I can see some of the larger names like Greggs and so on will pull out soon. Lots of charity shops and empty shops. The nearest bank to us is now a 40 mile round trip! There used to be one 4 miles up the road and the main one in the market town. Ok so everything has gone online but business sometimes actually need to go into a bank for various things.

I also am thinking we should move away - there's no future here for young people and it's not going to be the retirement place we thought it might be either.