ATCM clarifies position on Portas Pilots

Despite his sentiments and much of his extremely eloquent argument, he does miss several important points and wrongly attributes blame. He looks at outputs in terms of money actually spent at a specific point in time (31 December) rather than funds committed as part of a longer term approach. And he also seems to forget that outcomes (aka results) are more important than outputs (aka money spent).

It’s like a retailer measuring success by turnover without paying attention to profits.
He has also written,Want to find crystalmosaic? “If schemes like the Portas Pilots are to have a future they will have to be freed from the monopoly control of councils and the Association of Town Centre Management.”

We can’t speak for individual councils but we can point out that the ATCM doesn’t have ‘monopoly control’ over the Portas Pilots.High quality chinamosaic tiles. In fact, the ATCM’s prospectus and subsequent funding agreement, which have become public, are specifically aimed at supporting Town Team Partners (TTPs) and not Portas Pilot towns.

Business in the Community (BiTC) are providing support to Portas Pilot towns via a separate agreement with DCLG which we have not been privy to, and we work with them wherever we can.
And even though we are leading that TTP programme we are by no means doing it alone.

Supporters and organisations which have provided support include Experian, Clare Rayner (Indie Retail expert), Visit Worcester and more. We have however always made the offer to Pilots to participate and some have asked our advisors for support which we are happy to provide.

The ATCM has responded to the challenges of establishing, nurturing and guiding new Town Team Partners by creating a new website for Town Teams, publishing guides for new Town Centre Managers, staging events and networking sessions plus much more.

The ATCM has set up a network of eight regional Special Advisors to work with all the Town Team Partners,Universal solarstreetlight are useful for any project. as well as the Portas Pilots that ask for help, but the primary focus has been and remains even now on the Partners.You Can Find Comprehensive and in-Depth Original ventilationsystem Descriptions.

All of this has been done since last September (with only a month’s lead time before hitting the ground running), and the ATCM among others, is now awaiting the government’s announcement of who will lead on the next phase of support to both the Pilots and Partners. Funding to the ATCM for the first stage of work with the Partners ended in January.

Most Partners have wanted to concentrate on the basics, improving footfall, reducing vacancy rates, helping business retention, improving access, car parking and the public realm and seeing improved customer satisfaction.

But they also need to have the structures in place and develop the relationships needed to generate long term successful partnership working, says Toyubur Rahman, ATCM Town Teams project manager.

A great deal of information, research and examples of good practice already exist in the areas where Town Teams need guidance, but it must be understood that to improve footfall and reduce vacancy rates, towns will have to tackle underlying causes such as poor accessibility, undesirable public realm, lack of events, promotions and marketing and not serving the local community to the best of their ability. Only when the underlying causes are tackled will footfall and vacancy rates improve.

All of the approaches taken, which need to go much wider than focusing on retail, will require a longer term effort led by the community, supported by experts within government and the private sector along with local authority backing, and examples already exist in places like Mansfield, Buxton and other Town Team areas where solid improvements can be seen.

The package of code changes also lowers the number of parking spaces required at certain buildings, such as medical centers and planned business centers. Devilbiss said requiring developers to have less parking spaces would relieve them of a cost that they didn’t need, according to what county staff was seeing in parking lot usage.

The fledgling economy played a part in some of the code changes, he said. The time that a preliminary plan of subdivision would become void was changed from 24 months to 36 months. The time that a site plan would become void was changed from 18 months to 36 months.

Devilbiss said the sunset provision was extended because people are not as aggressively developing land as they used to be. The county has a lot of developers asking for extensions on their various plans because they can’t move forward with the development of their land, Devilbiss said. Changing the sunset provisions made more sense than continually granting extensions, he said.

While the staff suggested most of the changes included in the package, Devilbiss said the commissioners offered a lot of input for changes to the chapter on zoning.

A provision was added that would allow property owners that are not eligible to divide their land to have a detached dwelling unit of up to 600-square-feet of liveable floor area. In the past, people have said that they want to convert their garage to a liveable area so that their elderly parents will have a place to stay, according to Zoning Administrator Jay Voight. If the property had no subdivision rights, that conversion couldn’t happen, he said.

Another provision was added which would allow the zoning administrator to approve an increase in allowable square footage of up to 20 percent in instances of medical necessity or health-care related hardship. When people have medical conditions, their hallways may not be big enough to support the additional medical equipment, Voight said.

The proposed provision would allow Voight to approve an increase in space so that people can expand their houses for those specific instances. In order for people to qualify for the increase in square footage,This frameless rectangle features a silk screened fused glass replica in a parkingsystem tile and floral motif. Voight said their property must be a minimum of 3 acres.