Town Centre Reset Action Plan Commission

<p>Contract No. TCR/21/1 The Recovery Plan and the Town Centre Reset established Ashford&rsquo;s direction of travel as we emerge from the pandemic. The Town Centre Reset is a high level strategic document that considers the focus areas for development for Ashford Town Centre. We currently lack resource to dedicate taking this forward to develop an action plan and the Welcome Back Fund has provided an opportunity to complete this work. Officers within the Council have a wealth of knowledge and experience to assist its delivery which will be crucial as the project emerges. This is strongly supported in strand 6 of the Welcome Back Fund Guidance; &ldquo;Support local authorities to develop plans for responding to the medium term impact of Covid-19 including trialling new ideas particularly where these relate to the high street&rdquo;. This commission would work with Ashford Borough Council to consider our short and medium term options, based on data, creating a timeline of quick wins and medium term options for to be taken forward. This would provide the Borough Council with a clear vision for the next steps of the Town Centre Reset in a timely evidence based manner. This would ensure that Ashford had a clear vision for the next steps of the Town Centre Reset in a timely manner and provides us with a much needed evidence base. A knowledge or understanding of the planning system would be useful, given that some of the control around what uses may or may not be able to be encouraged (to deliver the aspiration and vision) is clearly relevant.</p>