Town Centres

I would like to see our town centres pedestrianised so that we can have places for coffee, street entertainment and small local market stalls. Perhaps we also need to think about creating park and rides on the edges of our towns, perhaps even with something like bicycle hire in the tourist season. I would also like to have bylaws introduced so that pubs in the town centre could not sell alcohol until 6pm but could still open to serve food and soft drinks. I think signage in town centres needs to be themed around the Cornwall flag colours so that we reclaim our regional identity. Where possible as town centre buildings change hands, I think facades should be brought back to the original buildings design to get rid of the "new bit" built onto the old which creates a mish mash of styles. I would also like to see some of the buildings brought back into local council ownership so that smaller craft shops could be created where local makers share space to sell their goods. These shops could charge rent based on profit and while this may not be commercially viable, the shortfall could be substituted by letting the flats above. This will encourage local start ups and allow us to promote a more sustainable shopping experience where the money stays in our local economy rather than going to pension funds.

Other things that could be explored are the viability of producing our own electricity as a County; after all energy costs are one of the reasons people cite as making GB expensive to do business; and with new technologies perhaps we could substantially undercut these costs, and further promote ourselves as an innovator in green power.