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Agenda item
City Centre Development & Delivery Plan
Minutes:
The Senior Project Manager introduced the item to Members and stated that Covid-19 had had a major impact on the City Centre but the Council was continuing to work with consultants to take to the work to the next stage. This was a long-term project that would likely take ten to fifteen years to complete.
The City Centre had experienced many of the impacts of Covid restrictions such as a reduction in the number of shoppers, workers, students and tourists. Officers took Members through the published information on footfall figures which they said demonstrated continued consumer demand because footfall figures were only slightly down year on year. However, it was said that Covid may have accelerated existing trends of online and out of town shopping. Many people had changed their ways of working and this could potentially lead to some vacancies in office space in the Centre.
A Member said that there were still lots of shops where the activity is only on the ground floor and other floors were left vacant. Also, that the City centre Debenhams building would soon also be vacant. What do officers think might happen to it?
Councillor Beech said that the rules on converting commercial spaces to residential spaces were being relaxed but the challenge was the lack of commercial will when it came to vertical mixing of spaces. The question was more about what needed to be done to encourage more commercial property owners to unlock vacant spaces. It was also highlighted that were some good examples where this was working in the City such as East Street in Bedminster and Old Market. She added that it wasn’t always the case that planning regulations were blocking changes, some buildings were run down and required considerable investment. Yes, the closer of Debenhams did pose key questions about the future of city centres. But in her view it was yet to be understood if this was an acceleration of trends.
A Member asked about the Development and Delivery Plan (DPP) that would be presented to Cabinet in Spring 2022 and asked if it could it come to scrutiny before that for Members to feed into? It was agreed that a small group could be set up or scrutiny could do a ‘deep-dive’ when the time was right.
Another Member commented that nothing like the current Covid situation had been seen like this in the retail sector before. This had in his view accelerated the existing trends in retail and he agreed with earlier comments that there was a need to plan for a less retail dominated City Centre in future and this was as an opportunity to create more homes there.
The Chair asked Members for their views on when they wanted this to come back to scrutiny. For example, did they want to wait until the DDP was complete before it was brought back to the Commission?
Officers said they were challenging themselves on the pace of the work. There were two key pieces of work they were looking to accelerate; one was the infrastructure and feasibility work around St James Barton roundabout and also the vision for Castle Park. Perhaps officers and Members could agree outside of the meeting when would be appropriate to come back in perhaps a staged up-date as the projects evolve and materialise? The Chair agreed it would be valuable for officers to return to scrutiny in the coming months.
Councillor Beech agreed to this approach and said Scrutiny were welcome to make the requests about which aspects they were particularly interested in.
The Chair thanked Councillor Beech and Officers and said she would give this some thought because it was such a big and crucial topic. She added that Members were very aware of the challenges ahead.
Supporting documents:
- City Centre Scrutiny Report 280121, item 115. PDF 192 KB
- Appendix A - City Centre Footfall Data, item 115. PDF 924 KB