Little Lever - The future of the Village Centre

Right, now this thing is on Google Search I can start sounding off. Let me declare an interest. My wife, Kathy, owns and runs the Village Tea Room in the centre of Little Lever.

This blog is to do with Little Lever and particularly the Village Centre. Over twelve months ago I had a letter published in the Bolton News forewarning of the potential decline of the Village Centre in terms of usage by the residents of Little Lever. The way that this recession is proceeding has only served to confirm my fears. The first sign of this was the demise of the Village Butcher - one of the icons of Village identity for years and years.

For every remaining business in the Village there is a threshold level of trade below which it will be impossible to continue trading. At a rough guess trade is already down by 10 -15% since last October. Unemployment has a long way to go before it peaks and that peak will lag behind the 'end' of the recession by as much as 12 months. By all accounts there is no sign of the end of the recession as yet and the worst case scenario is the 'double dip' where there is a slight recovery and then another slump in demand.

All this is the background to what may happen to the businesses in Little Lever. Nothing is sacred - no one is protected.I firmly believed, and still do, that it is possible to stop the decline and reverse it.The question was and is 'How?'

The answer is 'Feet on the Street' Roughly speaking, only about 500 of the 16,000 residents of Little Lever use the Village Centre shops on a regular basis. I argued in my original letter to the Bolton News that if every resident spent an extra £1 in the centre every week then the problem is solved. How is that achieved?

My next post will start listing the problems and solutions.

Paul