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The decline of town centres

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Bletchleyite

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That's great if you can get a direct bus from just 100 yards away. In lots of areas, people don't have that. In lots of areas, you're lucky if you have an hourly bus service. In our city, the bus station is at the "wrong" end of town, meaning very long walks across town if you want to go to some of the larger shops or the hospital. It's a mile away from the train station (no shuttle bus), so not usable as a means of transport to get to the train station either. Some towns are really badly planned as regards public transport. My son leaves home at 7.20 to guarantee arriving at school before 8.50 registration and we're only 4 miles away from town - that's nearly a mile walk to the bus stop, a 30 minute bus journey through villages and housing estates, then nearly a mile walk from the bus station to his school - so 90 minutes to travel 4 miles! He'll be driving as soon as he passes his test!

That of course is self-fulfilling - if nobody drove, a usable direct bus service would probably be viable, though probably infrequent still due to the low population.
 
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sprunt

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Only if you have been locked in a soviet missile silo for the last 55 years! It is a market like lots of other proper northern markets.

Do many northern markets have coach tours operating to them from as far away as Hull and Durham are from Bury?

Who? What? Should i know this chain?

Not necessarily, but it's a large multinational that is currently at the beginning of a UK expansion whether they've notified you or not, so it was worth mentioning in the context.
 

DarloRich

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Do many northern markets have coach tours operating to them from as far away as Hull and Durham are from Bury?

No idea. We have lots of good markets in the North. Leeds has great market, as does Newcastle. Even Darlington has a covered market hall with lots of different stalls. They don't have a black pudding shop mind.

Not necessarily, but it's a large multinational that is currently at the beginning of a UK expansion whether they've notified you or not, so it was worth mentioning in the context.

OK, means nothing round my way. What is it? A McDonalds type place?
 

Bletchleyite

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It's very overrated, had one of there coffees in America once, had to throw it away as it was so vile!

Yeah, I don't think it's that good either. Starbucks is better to be honest, or if you want to waste money on expensive doughnuts Krispy Kreme (which it's probably more like, to be honest). Or if you want cheap filter coffee, Pret.
 

cactustwirly

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Yeah, I don't think it's that good either. Starbucks is better to be honest, or if you want to waste money on expensive doughnuts Krispy Kreme (which it's probably more like, to be honest). Or if you want cheap filter coffee, Pret.

Pret do the best coffees of all the chains tbh.
I prefer the independent "artisan" coffee shops though.
 

Bletchleyite

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Pret do the best coffees of all the chains tbh.
I prefer the independent "artisan" coffee shops though.

Depends what you're after, really. Tim Horton's is more in the area of competing for coffee sales with Maccy's (which does very good coffee, largely because of their extremely tight cleaning procedures which mean the bean to cup machines are always kept impeccably clean - it's when they get scaled up and mucky that the quality of the coffee suffers).
 

underbank

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That of course is self-fulfilling - if nobody drove, a usable direct bus service would probably be viable, though probably infrequent still due to the low population.

So, they need to improve the bus service before people can give up their cars. It is indeed a chicken and egg situation. But just making life hard for the motorist isn't going to achieve it - you need the public transport to be in place BEFORE you start discouraging car usage.
 

thejuggler

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But how many hours do you then have to waste waiting in for their delivery? Or if you pay for express delivery, have you lost any price advantage there might have been?

Zero hours waiting All deliveries go to a place of work and they were free delivery. I was amazed that one item I ordered at about 8pm arrived 3pm next day and that was on a 3-5 day service. Another two items arrived today.
 

Bletchleyite

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Zero hours waiting All deliveries go to a place of work and they were free delivery. I was amazed that one item I ordered at about 8pm arrived 3pm next day and that was on a 3-5 day service. Another two items arrived today.

Waiting in for a courier is only necessary for the cheapest, worst couriers (e.g. Royal Mail, which is in the dark ages - long term I really don't see how it'll stay in business set against the vastly superior likes of DPD). And with many of them you can collect from e.g. a local shop. It's not the faff it used to be.
 

radamfi

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In the Netherlands, grocery shopping is typically done in local suburban shopping centres within short cycle ride from people's homes, although free car parking is usually also available. There is enough capacity for shopping in rear panniers and/or front mounted crates. Out-of-town supermarkets exist but not on the same scale as in the UK or France.
 

Bletchleyite

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In the Netherlands, grocery shopping is typically done in local suburban shopping centres within short cycle ride from people's homes, although free car parking is usually also available. There is enough capacity for shopping in rear panniers and/or front mounted crates. Out-of-town supermarkets exist but not on the same scale as in the UK or France.

FWIW, this is increasingly feasible in the UK with the coming of Tesco Express etc. Before that local shops were typically expensive and poorly-stocked, meaning a trip to the supermarket or into the town centre was unavoidable.
 

cactustwirly

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FWIW, this is increasingly feasible in the UK with the coming of Tesco Express etc. Before that local shops were typically expensive and poorly-stocked, meaning a trip to the supermarket or into the town centre was unavoidable.

The likes of Tesco Express & Co-Op are expensive compared to larger supermarkets, and the likes of Lidl & Aldi
 

underbank

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FWIW, this is increasingly feasible in the UK with the coming of Tesco Express etc. Before that local shops were typically expensive and poorly-stocked, meaning a trip to the supermarket or into the town centre was unavoidable.

Of course, before the supermarkets, there were plentiful shops on street corners and parades everywhere so people didn't actually need to go to a supermarket or town centre for their groceries! It's just full circle.
 

Bletchleyite

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The likes of Tesco Express & Co-Op are expensive compared to larger supermarkets, and the likes of Lidl & Aldi

They aren't *that* expensive. Certainly not on the order of magnitude of traditional corner shops. And they save time (which is, in some regard at least, money) and on bus fares, petrol etc.
 

Teflon Lettuce

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out of interest.. is there any correlation between sinking town centres and intransigent council planning policies? As most are aware every building in a town centre has a defined use {A1, A2 etc} which means that building can only be used for one or 2 purposes... perhaps the towns with thriving centres are the ones where the councils are more flexible over "change of use" applications? Obviously with the collapse of town centre retailing over the last 10 yrs there are a number of empty properties that have no real hope of ever being used for retail again... so perhaps the thriving towns are the ones where the council doesn't stick their head in the sand with the mantra "we've always had 20% retail units so we must keep 20% retail" whereas in thriving towns the council recognises that there has to be NEW uses found for empty buildings.

The other thing to point out is that in a number of towns the reason why the "town centre" is dying is because the "centre" has moved but the council refuse to recognise the fact. Which is strange because, up until post war planning policies town centres always had a habit of drifting around...
 

Bevan Price

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Ahem - I think you'll find it is in fact World Famous! But yes, as HowardH mentions above, the market is superb, it would take a spectacular cock-up by a council with it in their town to let the town centre get as run-down as many have. It's possibly also notable in Bury that rather than a big out-of-town centre, they built a brand new town centre shopping centre.

.

A lot of bungling town councils have ruined once thriving markets. "Street markets are untidy, messy places", let's get someone to provide a nice new building --- in which the rents are too high; traders can no longer afford to offer bargain prices; business declines; stalls close; markets are left with empty spaces, etc.
That is what happened in my home town, St. Helens; market split between two new buildings, and to make matters worse, they put all the fruit & veg. stalls upstairs - with no lift or escalators. Result ? Only one building still in use as market, with much empty space, and zero fruit & veg. stalls.

With the exception of Bury, and to a lesser extent, Bolton market, several once good North West markets seem to be in slow decline, others are gone completely, and a few have some of their "proper" market days replaced by "flea market" days. Those that remain still cater for some local shopping needs, but none seem likely to attract many visits by long-distance day-trippers. Saddest of all in my opinion are Oldham & Ashton Under Lyne, both of which were once at least the equal of Bury market.
 

bramling

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The likes of Tesco Express & Co-Op are expensive compared to larger supermarkets, and the likes of Lidl & Aldi

And my local Tesco Express is as good as useless to me - the range is so poor that I struggle to get the basic things I want. It’s been open a few years now and I’ve barely used it despite passing it on the way to and from the station.
 

Bletchleyite

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And my local Tesco Express is as good as useless to me - the range is so poor that I struggle to get the basic things I want. It’s been open a few years now and I’ve barely used it despite passing it on the way to and from the station.

My "use case" is a large delivery order of non-perishables and one lot of meat/fruit/veg once a month, then popping into the Tesco Express or Co-op for additional fruit, veg and milk. Seems to work for me.
 

Senex

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And my local Tesco Express is as good as useless to me - the range is so poor that I struggle to get the basic things I want. It’s been open a few years now and I’ve barely used it despite passing it on the way to and from the station.
My local Tesco Express started a few years back with a pretty standard rather down-market offer and never seemed very busy. However, after about a year or so there was a real shake-up, it began to stock more of the better ranges of stuff, and it now seems to do pretty good trade (though there are never enough people on the tills!). Clearly someone did actually react to who the city-centre customers are these days. For myself, it's a large delivery order of non-perishables every couple of months, fruit from the market (still quite good here, despite the city council's best efforts to kill it), and the rest from Tesco Express or M&S, both about quarter of a mile away. (It's lucky they are — bus service provision absolutely lousy.)
 

Ken H

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Been to small nearby market town today. Got bread and veg off the market, something I needed from the chemist, then into an independent coffee shop for a flat white and a toasted tea cake.

Have to go again for a couple of things i forgot - but I'll do that after the market goes and I can park easily.
 

cactustwirly

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My "use case" is a large delivery order of non-perishables and one lot of meat/fruit/veg once a month, then popping into the Tesco Express or Co-op for additional fruit, veg and milk. Seems to work for me.

I just walk to Lidl and do my weekly shop there.
 

Groningen

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It has also to do with Internet shopping. Less physical buying, but online. You have to be special to survive with a real store. Stores go and new on arrive. In the Netherlands Vroom en Dreesman, Kijkshop and Blokker almost have gone. Hema has problems and Action is a success story. In Groningen it is not that bad with empty stores.
 

BRX

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It all comes back to car dependency. The private car has done more damage to our urban, rural and public realms than anything else in the past 100 years and that includes two world wars.
 

BRX

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People feel they need a car to do their supermarket shopping because there's no shop in easy walking distance. And there's no shop in easy walking distance because people use their cars to do their supermarket shopping. It's a horrible vicious cycle and it's what's given us dead town centres and acres of pedestrian-unfriendly out of town sprawl.
Similarly many car drivers hate cyclists because they slow them down when they use road infrastructure designed for cars travelling at high speed. But no infrastructure has been built for cyclists to use instead, even though each cyclist potentially represents one less car on the road. It's not attractive to cycle, because of car traffic, so fewer people cycle and there's more traffic as a result. Another vicious cycle.
 

Bletchleyite

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It has also to do with Internet shopping. Less physical buying, but online. You have to be special to survive with a real store. Stores go and new on arrive. In the Netherlands Vroom en Dreesman, Kijkshop and Blokker almost have gone. Hema has problems and Action is a success story. In Groningen it is not that bad with empty stores.

That can also be management related. Blokker looks a bit like Woolworths (which failed) but also quite like Wilkinson's (which is very successful in the UK) or indeed the not dissimilar Clas Ohlson. In the end, often old chains die because changing what they do is like turning a supertanker.
 
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