Penrith’s high street has suffered multiple blows in recent months with the looming closure of three bank branches, and key shops having closed their doors
A cost of living crisis and a growing trend towards online shopping are putting town centres under pressure like never before. And Penrith is suffering more than most, with major roadworks dragging on for weeks and blocking routes for customers and deliveries.
Against this backdrop, two local experts share with Herald readers their views and ideas on possible ways forward which could see the town’s fortunes improved.
Architect Stephen Macaulay is president of Penrith Chamber of Trade & Commerce and has a long standing personal and professional interest in the future of a thriving town centre. Dr Chris Ford is a senior lecturer at Lancaster University Management School and a Cabinet Office Policy Fellow, with a special interest in town centres, as well as being a resident of Penrith.
Over the coming months we will revisit the town centre and all the factors which could shape its future.
Stephen Macaulay writes
As spring has now officially sprung, we can start thinking about summer and making plans. I suspect many of you have plans in place already and are looking forward to some time off. You’ll have booked airport parking, thought about your luggage allowance, airport transfers, exchange rates, hotels and so on. You’ve done this before, you know the pitfalls of not planning and you’ve done it often enough to know better.
Why is it then that when it comes to the future of our town there is no plan, no strategy, no direction?
This is 2024 and we are in Penrith.
In what is very likely going to be an election year, we find ourselves in new territory following on from last year’s redrawing of the council boundaries following Local Government Reorganisation.
Not believing in keeping things simple, we also have a new constituency boundary to manage. It has no relation to the council boundary. It feels like we are in a maelstrom of ever-changing circumstance. While we haven’t physically moved anywhere, the physical impact on our town will be significant.
When it comes to election time, if we don’t put a new plan for Penrith on every party’s manifesto, it won’t matter which colour you vote for, our town will suffer.
It is time to force them to sit down and shape the future of Penrith over the next five, 10, 25 years.
Without a plan, we are setting ourselves on a course of continued failure and decline. This might sound clichéd, but we really are at a turning point.
With the new authority, we are now in direct competition with Kendal and Barrow for funding. This is Kendal and Barrow that attracted £13.5m and £16m from the Levelling Up Fund while we squandered the opportunity by years of not planning for this and other funding bids.
You may have read in the Herald recently that we were eventually allocated £7.4m from the same pot as the Levelling Up Fund, for a project that was chosen by the then Eden District Council because it was the only project that was ‘spade ready’.
No other aspect was considered. It didn’t meet the funding criteria and Penrith Chamber of Trade & Commerce, Penrith Town Council, both Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) Penrith Futures Partnership and many others spoke against it because it ran counter to the criteria of the fund. It involved the development of employment space on a greenfield site at J41, which would take people away from the town centre, not back into it.
We have since been advised that the ‘spade ready’ project was not as ‘spade ready’ as first thought. Significant elements of the development were not costed and with increased inflationary pressures cited, the project is a non-starter.
Rubbing salt in the wound further, we understand that the KPIs (key performance indicators) that Eden District Council chose to measure the success of the development, by now mean that the funding cannot be reallocated to the town centre.
And how did it get to this point?
When the 2018 Beacon Villages Masterplan was presented it was heavily criticised and instead of working together to find consensus, plans were abruptly shelved.
When the new leadership took over the helm the focus moved to the climate emergency and the sustainability of the town left, as a result, to chance.
Without having strategic plans in place when the levelling up fund was announced, EDC’s response was to reach out to the community looking for ‘expressions of interest’ and see what opportunities there might be — could there be a project out there that met all the criteria of the fund as well as being ready to go? This was pot luck and it would appear that the answer was ‘no’. Yet in the intervening two years, no further action has been taken to move other plans forward.
Every venture needs a plan. When you go on holiday you cost this up before you book, When you start a business, you start with an idea then test the idea, make a business plan, look at strengths and weaknesses opportunities and threats. Then you go to the funder with your great idea and your costings to justify a loan. In every part of life this is the way of it. Ideas, planning, implementation.
This is no different when it comes to town planning. If we want Penrith to succeed and prosper, we need to plan it.
We need our leaders to understand the importance of this and make our voices heard.
When you vote this year, vote for Penrith. Vote for your town. And hold them to account when they fail to plan.
When someone knocks on your door asking for your vote, ask them “what are you going to do for our town centre?”
