Priority Actions

1/ Active City Centre Management

An active approach to managing the City Centre should be pursued. Critical to this is an appreciation of the time and work that will be involved in bringing about change. A new role should be created for an individual to have strategic oversight and be the focus of all City Centre activities. The individual will work in association with the Council and have a skill set not currently found at the Council. The individual will have responsibility for delivering the change required to meet modern expectations of City Centres and the demands of those wanting to experience a lifestyle synonymous with modern City Centre living.

2/ Presumption in Favour of Residential Use

A key aim of planning policy should be to increase residential living in the City Centre. This principle should inform any update of the One City Plan or re-draft of the Council’s Development Plan. Residential living includes niche residential products such as student accommodation and aparthotels. This will build on current opportunities being explored by the Council to encourage upper floor conversions to residential in the historic Rows.

3/ Co-ordinated Cultural Events

An Exhibition Strategy should be formulated to ensure a spread of events throughout the year. This will ensure cultural events are co-ordinated and can complement each other to encourage visitors to return to Chester on multiple occasions, rather than competing for the same visitors. Linked to this, the Council should formulate a clear policy on the purpose of public space and how it can be used. Council owned public space should be considered an asset to be managed. Council owned public space should have a function and should be activated in collaboration with the private sector.

4/ Explore the Potential Benefits of Agglomeration

The Council should actively create additional space and areas within the City Centre to be the focus of particular enterprises. The Council should decide upon a sector which it wants to attract to the City Centre, seek out occupiers, and create an offer to bring about their relocation to Chester. A key benefit of the co-location of enterprises is that it creates a destination within a destination. The Council may want to consider the clustering of health, well-being, and beauty enterprises to coincide with emerging healthy living agendas.

5/ Role of the Stakeholders

The Council, with its stakeholders should continue to take responsibility for facilitating regeneration in the City Centre. It should therefore be actively looking to make positive interventions to maintain, facilitate, and enhance the City Centre environment and people’s experience of it. The present retail climate and the pressures brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic has brought about a generational opportunity. The reappropriation of the vacant units should be explored; the Council should look to faciliate and utilise vacant space to contribute to the future proofing of the City Centre and take advantage of the structural changes to the high-street which are taking place. There are a wide range of public sector funding opportunities available to unlock development schemes as set out at Appendix O and these should be carefully considered and applications made where strategic alignment is identified.

6/ Social Value

The City Centre should be an inclusive place to live and visit and to achieve this it is imperative the Council maintains an on-going engagement exercise with its stakeholders. Engaging with stakeholders will need to be an on-going commitment as the demographics of the City Centre, and by extension the changing needs and demands of its stakeholders, evolve.