Towards a New Vision for Derby City Centre - Ambition (update)

Overview

Our city centre, like many others, is facing unprecedented challenges. Long term issues such as an over-reliance on a declining retail market and limited city centre living and office markets have been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic. This has led to a cycle of falling numbers of people on the streets, unoccupied premises, continuing problems with crime and anti-social behaviour, leading to a general feeling of decline.

Positive things are already happening which will boost the city centre, such as the exciting Becketwell project and the restoration of the Market Hall. However, these schemes alone are not sufficient to ensure that the city centre is fit for the 21st century. Tinkering around the edges is no longer enough and we need to develop a clear, bold and importantly collective vision to tackle issues head on and to demonstrate that the city centre has a long term future. This will give confidence to local businesses, investors and external funders and will be part of an overall package of measures including short term interventions to address immediate challenges.

The vision needs to be different to previous plans and strategies that have been developed. The vision needs to provide an overarching framework and set the direction of travel, within which more detailed plans and strategies can be developed, both by the Council and partners.

Starting the Conversation

Throughout 2021 and 2022 we began a conversation with stakeholders to understand the issues facing the city centre and get to grips with the potential ideas, interventions and opportunities that could help to transform it.

During Summer 2022 we published a document called ‘Ambition’ which was an important first step in developing the vision, setting out the issues we think need to be addressed and identified ideas and potential interventions for addressing these. The document was wide-ranging, based around a series of themes. Feedback was sought to try to gauge the reaction to our ideas and assess whether we were thinking along the right lines.

We have now published a full summary of the feedback we received as well as a short summary highlighting the key messages.

Thanks to everyone that contributed to the conversation. We will now be using the feedback to help shape the next steps.