‘Build better high streets with community value charters’

A TOWN centre review has revealed that communities need a bigger voice post-Covid-19.

The Grimsey Review ‘ Build Back Better, Covid-19 Supplement for town centres, released on Saturday, June 20, recommended that Localis’s ‘Community Value Charter’ model should be adopted by all local authorities to help communities unlock their potential.

Based on the format of the Local Plan, this model would require councils to give communities a greater say in the benefits received in the commissioning of local services from commercial suppliers.

Localis chief executive, Jonathan Werran said: “In the teeth of the biggest recession in recorded history, our underthreat high streets must make maximum use of social value from public service commissioning to aid their necessary transformation for survival.

“The social value agenda presents the most direct and immediate route to building back better socially and making the government’s ‘levelling-up’ agenda for rebalancing the economy come together.

“The Grimsey Review’s support for Localis’s ‘Community Value Charter’ model — which requires councils to give communities a greater say in the benefits received in the commissioning of local services from commercial suppliers — will, we hope, inspire local government and the wider public sector to pick up and run with a simple and effective way to kickstart the long journey from lockdown to recovery.”