This town (town) is coming like a ghost town

Jerry Dammers

Yesterday walking around Leicester city centre the Specials song kept repeating itself in my head.

As with many small and not so small cities Leicester has a massive shopping centre/mall that has sucked much of the life out of the rest of the centre.  The difference is so stark and if you are like me shocking because I am one of those people who mostly shops at the shopping centre.   Walk beyond this and it sometimes feels like you are stepping into a different world of cheap shops or boarded up properties.   If it wasn’t for the growth of coffee shops and other eating places the situation would be far worse.  However, these outlets are never going to be able to replace the large tent poll stores that once populated the main shopping areas of Leicester.

Of course with any such social problem there are many contributing factors and I am sure we can all come up with our own pet theory.  Nonetheless, the city centre is slowly dying and there doesn’t appear to be anything effective to reverse this.  I don’t think that Brexit is responsible for this either as I suspect this is a longer term trend.  However, I cannot see how Brexit will bring about an improvement either but perhaps it might help if the government devoted as much time and money trying to ameliorate a No Deal Brexit to solving these real problems instead.   Just a thought.

Whatever challenges no deal will cause in the short term 
- and they are significant

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster - 8th October 2019