BEING creative is all very well, but are the ideas affordable? With the UK still in economic gloom, analysing the financial viability of any project is very important if the visions are to come to fruition. We now know quite a few things about the range and depth of UK economic woes.

And of those things, several concern our local councils. We know they are not cutting any grass; we’ve just been told that they are not subsidising charities; and we know that they have had all their Government funding capped. So if we are to change the urban landscape for the better, it probably needs to be largely self-financing.

So let us consider a hypothetical strip of Zone B town centre peripheral land about 140 metres by 60 metres. Typically, this strip may contain around 28 shops, probably dilapidated to some extent and most likely “well past their sell-by date”.

Because individual landlords own the stores, there is little or no incentive for any one shop to thoroughly and tastefully refurbish to a high quality. With rateable values of approximately £18,000 each, these 28 shops would, using the standard business rate multiplier of 0.433, generate £7,797 in business rates per year per store, or £216,000 in total for all stores.

If, however, all the shops were demolished, a housing association could build 144 top quality apartments of around 100 square metres (1,000 sq ft) that surround a park area of 100 metres by 40 metres.

The park would be owned for the nation in perpetuity and the council would accrue £218,000 in council tax.

In other words, the loss of business rates from demolishing the shops, of which there were arguably too many anyway, will probably be balanced by council tax from the apartments.

And the more “green” or water amenities that are created, the more the flats will be worth. It’s also worth noting that the council keeps all council tax income, whilst it has to pass over the vast proportion of business rates to the government.

Let us not forget too, the virtuous circle that can be created from having people back residing in the town centre, aggregated to visitors and tourists staying in hotels and hostels. More people equals more venues, more amenities, more jobs, more revenue all round. A quick visit around the iconic towns of Europe reviewed in the third of my articles will show you that tourism definitely reduces the pain of recession.

Of course there is a catch, but it is not financial. People will only come back to live in town if the anti-social behaviour problem is totally and permanently resolved, of that there is no doubt.

MIKE Phillips, managing director of Purepages Group in Church Bank, Bolton, is an ex-director of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and KPMG.

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