Must be more to town than nail bars and hairdressers

Is the utilization of retail snobbery in Ashford a good or bad thing, as it appears to be deployed in different areas of the town in different ways.

In the town centre itself, we have hairdressers, nail bars, coffee shops, fried chicken shops and niche foreign nationality 24/7s, interspersed with charity shops in abundance.

Now it’s been heralded that Nando’s could move into the Designer Outlet when things return to the new normal, so obviously the initial wishlist that was proposed for the occupants of the units has been revisited.

Equally, it seems to be ordained that we should forego any reasonably priced drinking establishments in the town.

The attitude seems to be that, if people must drink, they can pay £4.50+ a pint in some of the fine eateries that have been attracted here.

I suppose the light at the end of the tunnel due to Debenhams’ demise is we may finally get a Primark.

Any occupied shop is better than and unoccupied one, granted.

But I find it hard to believe the demand is high for a multitude of themed shops that we have multiples off.

That said, there is an everexpanding number of empty units that will need filling below all these new apartment buildings/flats, going up around the area.

Yes, the high street as we know it is going through a major evolutionary step at the minute. But let’s deploy a little out-the-box thinking and actually ask what the residents of Ashford would like in town - and act on it.

After all, they are the people who will populate the high street of tomorrow.

Presently it would appear those that plan Ashford have assumed people are happy to have nicely manicured nails, a fixation with getting their hair cut, go against the grain of being a nation of tea lovers, have a reasonable amount of income to enjoy a regular intake of alcohol and love the idea of going around the world in 80 eateries.

Or is it they are not interested in listening to what people would like in town, a theatre being amongst the list?

Adrian Cussens