Basildon Council leader Gavin Callaghan writes to Echo readers

WE all know that Basildon town centre should be better than it currently is.

I often ask myself how did it come to this?

How did we land in a position where we have a town centre where the council doesn’t own hardly any buildings, can’t lower rents for businesses and doesn’t own car parks to offer free parking?

Basildon is the capital of South Essex.

We are the borough with the biggest population – bigger than Thurrock or Southend.

We have the biggest businesses in the region and our economy is responsible for 25 per cent of the total economy of Essex.

If you stood on Tower Bridge and looked east all the way down the River Thames to the end of Southend Pier, the only place, north and south of the river, with a bigger economy than Basildon, is Canary Wharf.

So why is it that despite our lofty ambitions for business, we have lacked any serious ambition for regeneration of Basildon town centre?

Why have we simply accepted that other boroughs can have multi-million pound regeneration schemes that include leisure, arts, culture, retail and housing, but Basildon, the economically most successful borough of the lot, should settle for second best?

It speaks to a fundamental lack of confidence and vision that pervaded the halls of Basildon Council for the last 15 years.

To use a boxing analogy, Basildon needs to get up off the canvas.

It needs to start throwing some punches. It needs to hold its collective head up and have belief in itself.

And that starts with the council.

For too long the view has been, “it’s too hard” just start “small”

and then there will be a domino effect.

The proof that this won’t happen is in the fact that for 15 years Basildon town centre has been going backwards, not forwards.

While we always have to be realistic, we should never be paralysed by pessimism.

The Basildon Borough Alliance of Labour and Independent councillors that runs Basildon Council has spent more time working on this than any other policy reform over the last 12 months, because we know how important this regeneration is, not just to Basildon town centre but to our whole borough and the wider perception of Basildon in the region.

We are determined to build homes for young people who are stuck at home with mum and dad with no realistic prospect of owning their own home.

We are determined to build homes to clear the council house waiting list.

We are determined to build a town centre that goes back to first principles of Basildon and puts culture and the arts at the heart of what we’re about.

The masterplan is reimagining Basildon around four key principles.

First we need to redefine the perception of Basildon town centre. What is the purpose of it? Are people really just going to continue to use it for retail? I don’t think so. There needs to be a strong culture, arts and leisure offer that sits alongside a residential offer. That is why we propose a new theatre and an arena for music, sports, e-gaming and business conferencing.

So to make that work, the second principle is to ensure we create something of real high quality and desirable for people to live, work, shop, eat and travel to.

This means the town centre will need to be much greener, safer and more welcoming than it currently is.

That is why we are proposing green roofs on houses, bigger and greener open space in pedestrianised areas of the town centre and a reformed offer of restaurants and bars.

Thirdly we need to bring the economic powerhouse from our industrial estates into our town centre.

We have hundreds of businesses currently in remote locations scattered around the borough.

That is why we are proposing to build high quality work places that are flexible to the modern working needs and centre of technology and innovation.

And finally, it cannot just be bricks and mortar.

We need infrastructure too.

So the town centre must become home to new public and community services.

That is why we are already talking to the NHS about how we bring healthcare services into the town centre and improve the civic offer we currently have.

All of this is captured in our masterplan that yesterday councillors approved.

For this to work, it does need to be a constant conversation between the public, businesses, traders and the council.

That is why we have built into this masterplan process, more public consultation than any other regeneration programme in the history of Basildon Council.

And we should never forget that we are talking about an incredibly large footprint.

From start to finish, Basildon town centre currently runs for 1 km. It is huge.

That is why we know that we must condense our retail offer, so that more people shop and roam but also why we can be confident that nothing we are proposing is overbearing.

The town is large in space and that will be protected in the planning process.

The town centre is going to look very different to how it looks now. There will be new architecture, and design. We are presiding over a £1 billion regeneration scheme.

That reflects the ambition, but also the cost to put two decades of decline right.

Basildon Council will not be footing this bill. It will be overwhelmingly financed from the private sector.

In fact there is already in the region of £350million of private sector money on the table ready to be pumped into the developments right now.

Regeneration works when the public sector acts as a catalyst for the private sector to invest heavily.

In other words, we have made a number of strategic interventions already, to buy small sites that would have prevented the private sector from developing.

We have removed this barrier.

I think this is incredibly exciting. We’re not reinventing the wheel, but we are trying to ensure Basildon gets his mojo back.

It is about time we had a town centre that showed us off and that we can all be proud to call our own.

Let’s not set limits on what we can achieve, no ideas are off the table – believe in what we can achieve.

Believe in Basildon.