Town centre action plan review: joint Scottish Government and COSLA response

4. Scenario

What are these actions designed to achieve?

Towns that develop in a sustainable way, that enable communities to influence that development, and build on the empowerment approaches across Scotland. Communities of identity and interest, particularly those experiencing inequalities, empowered to identify their own needs and opportunities, and supported to participate in planning their own futures.

Place based approaches to town centres embedded across policy areas so that support, funding and decision making is better co-ordinated and aligned to deliver the collaboratively agreed vision unique to that town centre. With demonstrators testing and showcasing what is possible to inspire other town centres to adapt the learning to their local context and setting.

More opportunities for living well locally in our town centres, where the design, development and management of our towns support people to meet most of their daily needs locally within a 20-minute neighbourhood helping us address climate change, meet our net zero ambitions, encourage healthier active travel options and reduce the need to travel unsustainably.

The development of local wellbeing economies with town centres at their heart, which put people, place and planet first and foremost; enabling and empowering communities to tackle poverty and inequality on their own terms. Where more town centre assets are owned, managed and used locally, creating opportunities for local entrepreneurs, capacity and skills building - with equity of access to digital. Where local decision making is based on a deep understanding of local assets, resources and challenges to enable local partners to focus on the issues that matter to them in the places they live, work, play and spend time in.

Next steps

We will support and enable these outcomes to be delivered via this action plan. We will work with others to monitor and evaluate progress and support engagement to collaborate, explore best practice and learn from each other.

There are a number of sites which share good practice, case studies and tools which support work in towns and town centres, these include but are not restricted to, those found via the Our Place website which includes links to the Place Standard Tool, Scotland's Towns Partnership and Improvement Service websites.