And don’t do it again!

Everybody is redesigning their Town Centre.

Bang the words into Google and you will find pages of Towns all unhappy with what they’ve got now, all employing remarkably similar phrases to punt a new, more attractive, more prosperous future.

There is also, generally, a disinclination to consider how the Town got into a spiral of decline in the first place and how, in the future it proposes successfully to avoid losing their way again.

No one is guaranteed a bright future. Stuff happens. As Macmillan put it “Events, dear boy.” But the tale of woe coming out of Sutton over the past five years indicates a level of discontent at the political level which is quite shocking.

Sutton Councillors are returned year after year for the primary purpose of maintaining the traditional self image of the townsfolk. In this they have lamentably failed. But the genius of the Tories is in inflating those expectations year upon year despite the brutal reality of empty retail units, a huge construction hole in the middle of town and a transport system which strangles the town.

Much as the MP might retreat behind his doleful descriptions of the difficulties of redesign with multiple owners, there is nevertheless a surprising confidence that things will get better.

We shall see.

There is surely, however the renewal turns out, a case for the city fathers devolving a direct personal responsibility for the well being of the Town Centre.

Effectiveness is linked very strongly with selection of priorities. No one in the last five years has made it their business to sustain the future of Sutton Coldfield Town Centre. There is an obvious need for a political understanding that one person should possess the authority to speak for the Town and that person should reinforce his or her stature by carrying out, week in, week out, the necessary ‘ugly’ tasks of consulting, probing, encouraging, suggesting, defining how best the Town might live up to the expectations of its inhabitants.

Any fool can commission a redesign, any fool can go through the motions of public consultation. The clever trick lies in forestalling decay. Sutton is patently not good at reinventing itself. The process should begin with a hard headed appraisal of ‘how we got to be here’ and then take some time to consider ‘how we intend to consolidate our gains’.

This is not a good time for the quick fix.


Nightwatchman