THURROCK COUNCIL, business leaders and Labour prospective parliamentary candidate, Polly Billington gathered round the table at Grays shopping centre to review how a number of matters can be improved at the centre.
A specialist “town team” is being created to help reinvigorate Grays town centre and Thurrock Council is bidding to get Mary Portas to help.
A recent meeting of the council’s cabinet supported the plan to bid for up to £100,000 government funding for the scheme and the input of £100,000 in “Section 106” money as well.
In 2011 Mary Portas – television’s Mary Queen of Shops – was asked by the government to conduct an independent review in to the state of High Streets across the country.
The Portas Review was published in December and contains 28 recommendations aimed at maintaining and strengthening the role of town centres including roles for central government, local government, business and communities.
One of the primary recommendations is to put in place Town Teams with a visionary, strategic, and strong operational management team.
In February the government issued the Portas Pilots Prospectus: an invitation to become a Town Team, inviting applications to pilot the approach.
The move was backed unanimously and speaking afterwards, Cllr Andy Smith, the portfolio holder for regeneration, said: “Most of us around that table were long=term residents of Thurrock, people who remember Grays High Street as it used to be.
“High Streets across the country have taken a bit of a beating over the past couple of decades and Grays is no exception – but that’s going to change.
“Yes we’re going to bid for this money, but more than that we think that a Grays Town Team working with current and future investors and taking advantage of new developments in the area such as the new campus will more than pay for itself in the long term, even the medium term.
“It’s all part of our Thurrock regeneration story. Creating a new ‘town centre’ style development at Lakeside will help Grays move forward in a different but complementary way.”
Letters of support have to be received by Monday, 19 March if they are to be included in the bid. The letters can be emailed to [email protected]
www.thurrock.gov.uk/graystownbid
Something really needs to be done with Grays Town Centre, it is Ok if you want Afro Carribean or Eastern European goods, your nails or your hair doing, every shop that is opening up is the same.
Do the council not have powers to stop too many of these businesses opening in every spare outlet, it does not take someone like Mary Portas to see what is wrong with the Town Centre just ask the local residents….
If Labour are a part of this town team I expect very little to be achieved.
Cllr Andy Smith said “Creating a new ‘town centre’ style development at Lakeside will help Grays move forward in a different but complementary way.” Huh? How does that work? Lakeside is a huge part of the reason Grays has declined in the first place.
The place is a dump and if Morrisons wasn’t there hardly anyone would go there. The place has lost it’s identity and community. Long standing businesses have gone because the so called new community wasn’t interested in supporting local businesses as used to happen years ago. The market is full of stalls selling cheap shoddy crap. There is bvirtually no stalls selling fresh foods. Gp to markets in other parts of the country and see what a market should be like. There is nothing there for the past local community to want to go back. Grays is finished.
I find myself agreeing with upthereds on this issue. The Town is dilapidated and sadly beyond the capabilities of the local Council to regenerate. Without Morrison’s people would not come any more. Shoddy small market – Demolish the Gym over in South Grays and if the money cannot be found – strip the STATE of its heritage items and demolish it, The STATE represents a new Cenotaph marking Grays Town’s Civic and Business decay. Seeing it daily is depressing as is coming to Grays. 40 years a town in terminal decline.