Folkestone Town Centre Plan: Can New Markets Bring Shoppers Back?
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A new Town Centre Operating Model aims to turn Folkestone’s public-realm works into a living, trading, event-filled town centre. Scrutiny councillors liked the idea, but warned that one three-day-a-week role may be carrying a very heavy load.
Folkestone’s new town-centre plan is trying to answer the question every regeneration scheme eventually meets: what happens after the paving, planting and public-realm photographs are done?
At the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Tuesday 26 May, officers set out the Town Centre Operating Model, or TCOM, as the missing “performance” around Folkestone’s Brighter Future capital works. The public spaces may be improved, but as one officer put it, the council still needs “a reason for people to come to the town centre”. That’s the plain-English point at the heart of the scheme.
The model is intended to cover Guildhall Street, Sandgate Road and Bouverie Square. It’s being developed alongside the Folkestone – A Brighter Future works, which include the same key town-centre streets and spaces. The ambition isn’t just to tidy the town up, but to activate it: more markets, more events, more reasons to visit, and fewer forms, delays and mysterious council corridors for anyone trying to put something on.
At present, the machinery sounds about as nimble as a shopping trolley with one square wheel. Officers told councillors that anything beyond the existing casual market has to go through the events process and Safety Advisory Group process, with an eight-to-12-week timeline. Guildhall Street and Sandgate Road are also highways, meaning Kent County Council permission is needed. In other words, even a modest pop-up event can find itself wrestling with bureaucracy before a single trestle table appears.
TCOM is meant to change that. The council wants a pre-approved framework, operator-led markets, a clearer planning consent, a land-use agreement with KCC Highways, and one visible point of contact. That point of contact is the proposed town centre manager, a 0.6 full-time equivalent role — effectively three days a week — sitting in the regeneration team and expected to work flexibly, including weekends when events are on.
The money, for now, is external. Officers said the town centre manager role would be funded for the first two years through outside funding, mainly MHCLG capacity planning money. The longer-term aspiration is a “self-sustaining, self-financing model”, with operators paying fees once the market and events offer is established. In year one, officers accepted there may need to be incentives to attract the right operators.
That’s sensible, but it also exposes the risk. A self-financing model only works if the thing being financed actually grows legs. Councillor Abena Akuffo-Kelly pressed the right questions: what happens if the council can’t secure enough good operators, how will success be measured, and is three days a week enough for a role that appears to sit beneath the whole project like the last Jenga block?
Officers said one operator had already expressed interest and that the fallback would be more council-supported pilot events, similar to those run over the last two years. They also said the role would be backed by the wider regeneration team. That helps. But it doesn’t remove the central issue: this scheme will stand or fall on execution, not vocabulary.
Councillor Bridget Chapman (Ind – pictured) asked for the evidence behind Folk About Town. Officers said there had been six events, with the food event and skate event drawing the strongest footfall and feedback. The interesting finding was that the market alone wasn’t enough. It needed “a market plus music”,“a market plus a skate event”, or “a market plus something”. That’s useful evidence. It also tells councillors something simple: Folkestone doesn’t just need stalls; it needs a proper reason to linger.
Several councillors pushed the model beyond Folkestone. Councillor Alan Martin asked whether it could be scaled to smaller towns such as New Romney and Hythe. Councillor Anita Jones asked how quickly the same simplified land-use approach could help Hythe, New Romney and Lydd, where volunteer-run events already have to battle road-closure and permission hurdles. Officers said the model was designed to be scalable, although the funded town centre manager role itself was Folkestone-focused.
There was also a local government reorganisation shadow over the discussion. Officers said the model was being designed with “lift and shift” in mind — something that could be picked up by a future unitary authority, the current district council, or even a town council. That’s the right kind of thinking. If the district is heading towards reorganisation, anything half-built needs to be capable of surviving the furniture move.
Councillor Laura Davison pushed for the principles behind the scheme: what kind of market, what kind of town-centre feel, who gets to use the space, and how community groups fit in. Officers said the full consultant work was more than 100 pages long and agreed that a summary should be shared with councillors. That matters. Without clear principles, “activation” can become a council word for random busyness.
The committee’s recommendation was modest but important. Members agreed to receive and note the report and provide feedback to officers. Councillor Tony Hills, chairing, also asked officers to come back “in the not too distant future” with an update.
So, the committee broadly liked the direction of travel. And why wouldn’t it? A town centre with fewer empty moments, fewer bureaucratic tripwires and more properly curated activity is a better offer than another glossy strategy left gently ageing on a shelf.
But the real test is now painfully practical. Can Folkestone attract the right operators? Can it make markets useful for ordinary residents as well as weekend browsers? Can it connect Guildhall Street, Sandgate Road, Bouverie Square, Tontine Street and the Old High Street without setting them against each other? And can a three-day-a-week post turn a regeneration idea into something residents can see, hear, buy from and believe in?
The paving may provide the stage. The town centre manager now has to find the show.
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