The right Vision for Salisbury?

I'M starting to question whether it’s wise to build more shops on the central car park.

With so many stores closing locally and nationally, and with customers deserting traditional town centres for the internet, does it make long-term sense?

From the soundings I’ve taken, there’s certainly an appetite for a few more fashion outlets in Salisbury.

And we know the big chains don’t like our little olde-worlde shops because they can’t display their merchandise in bulk, as they do in every clone town in Britain.

But I don’t want to live in a Basingrad.

It’s these funny, inconvenient buildings, so full of character, that form the city’s heart and soul, just as much as the Cathedral and its swankier environs.

While the retail giants aren’t interested in occupying them, local independent traders struggle to afford them.

Commercial rents in Salisbury, even in our secondary shopping streets, are punishingly high for anyone thinking of setting up in business.

And it would seem from the evidence all around us that landlords can afford to leave shops vacant for months on end, rather than reduce their demands.

Add to all this the general reluctance of the paying public to walk more than a hundred yards from their cars, and I feel uneasy.

Don’t we risk parts of our city centre – i.e. those furthest away from the new development – degenerating into retail wastelands, just as the Marlands in Southampton did after West Quay was built?

With wages around here so low, there’s only so much shopping that the population of South Wiltshire can do.

And the world’s moved on from those heady days when a credit card and a day out at a mall were seen as the answer to all our woes. I don’t believe we’ll be going back there again.

In terms of what Salisbury actually needs, I think there’s an arguable case for the central car park to be developed in another way - for affordable homes for sale to first-time buyers, if possible with some kind of covenant to prevent private landlords snapping them up.

And maybe some housing aimed at older people, too, to take advantage of the level walk to all the central facilities.

More people living in the city centre would help support the traders we’ve still got, and maybe we wouldn’t need to build on quite so many green fields.

And while I’m on about it, what about some incentives for the owners of our existing shops to turn their empty upper floors into homes? There are a lot of them.

Well, that’s my Salisbury Vision.