Town Teams, Portas Pilots and the future of the high street

Abstract

The Association of Town & City Management is working with Town Teams and Portas Pilots across England, delivering a broad support scheme funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government. Town Teams are a new, bottom-up, ideally community-led approach to place management, and as such are beginning to provide new insights into partnership working, town and city centre governance structures and, significantly, the role that local communities can take in this discussion. This paper sets out to detail learning so far on the Town Team journey, and suggests that partnerships should use this knowledge to create sustainable delivery vehicles that focus on providing local solutions to the long-term business, social and community needs of their area.