Scarborough Town Centre Strategy

Our Vision

Scarborough Town Centre will re-align itself for the 21st century to become a hub of leisure, learning and living by building on its rich heritage, culture and traditional retail and leisure offer. It will become a national exemplar through dynamic, welcoming and customer / community focussed activity and intervention. This will be measured by footfall, vacancy rates, levels of investment, new business start-ups, stakeholder involvement and customer satisfaction.

You can read the Town Centre Strategy and Action Plan.

Strategic objectives

To build the success of Scarborough Town Centre as a vibrant, mixed use centre for all stakeholders, investors and the community we aim to:

Be the best performing coastal town centre in England by 2025 and the primary economic hub for retail, leisure, learning and living within the Yorkshire coast area.
Increase residential living within our town centre by 25% by 2025
Work together with public and private property owners and agencies to ensure the built environment and infrastructure exceeds the expectations of our customers and community by 2025.

Our primary focus of activity will be based around seven key themes:

Encourage a diverse offer within the Town Centre through festivals and events, incentives, planning, licensing & regulation and building on our cultural and heritage assets.

We will work to deliver interventions which will provide a clean & safe environment for all and physically improve the public realm infrastructure and streetscape making best use of our heritage assets.

Working with further & higher education providers to grow the student population by providing them with space within the town centre to live, study and socially interact whilst creating a town centre experience that will attract students.

Encourage a more diverse evening economy that appeals to a wider range of ages and interests and increase the number of people using the Town Centre during the early evening.

By capitalising and investing in the existing high speed broadband network we will work to establish a SMART town centre providing up to date information on everything happening within the town from one virtual platform as well as the provision of electric vehicle charging infrastructure and the creation of a Tech hub.

Establish a coherent and collaborative marketing and promotional platform for the town by creating a common marketing hub providing pathways to everything the town has to offer and bringing together the retail, leisure, tourism, cultural, heritage and community through one gateway.

To establish a culture which will be flexible, welcoming and supportive of entrepreneurs and inward investment whilst recognising the needs of customers and the wider community and place them at the forefront of what we do.

Town Centre Strategy Team

Integral to the delivery of the Town Centre Strategy is the development of a multi-sector Town Centre Strategy Team to drive the process forward. The Council recognises that it cannot achieve the collective vision in isolation and needs to continue to build partnerships with residents, community groups and local business. The Town Centre Strategy Team will work with the Council and its partners to lead on and, where appropriate, deliver projects and initiatives that advance the priorities outlined in the Strategy.

Heading up the Town Centre Strategy Team will be a Chair and Vice Chair along with five ‘Town Champions’ who will work with partners to take forward specific themes / actions within in the Strategy.