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54%
of Lancaster residents say they support Centros Miller’s proposals to
redevelop the Canal Corridor site in Lancaster city centre – with only 12%
saying they oppose the scheme, 14% undecided and 19% with no opinion. This
is the main result of an independent opinion poll of a representative
cross-section of Lancaster and Morecambe residents by the highly-respected
national opinion-polling organisation, ICM and means that for every two
people against the proposals there are nine in favour of them.
Around 60% of the local population are aware of the content of the
proposals and the level of support rises to 61% in this group, showing
that the more people know about the development, the more they support it.
50% of local people also thought the development will make
Lancaster a better city. Only 8% think it would make the city worse, with
21% thinking there will be no difference and 20% having no
opinion.
As well as establishing these highly-authoritative
measures of support for the development proposals, people were asked where
else (other than Lancaster) that they went for non-food shopping (clothes,
footwear, gifts and small household goods), how frequently they travelled
elsewhere and what proportion of their expenditure on clothes and footwear
they spent in those destinations.
64% said they travelled regularly
to Preston to shop (43% of whom travel at least monthly or more
frequently). Regular visits to other shopping centres also included:
Kendal (53%); Manchester (47%); Blackpool (28%); and Carlisle
(15%).
From the information given, the ICM survey established that
an average of 43% of local people’s expenditure on clothes and footwear is
currently being spent in these other competing shopping destinations.
David Lewis, associate director of Centros Miller, said: “This survey confirms what we’ve always believed: a clear
majority of local people are keen to see the Canal Corridor site
redeveloped to extend Lancaster’s city centre and provide the range of
shopping and other facilities that the city urgently needs in order to
compete with other regional centres.
“It also shows that the lack
of an attractive range of fashion shopping in the city is currently
driving people elsewhere in their thousands. If that is allowed to
continue, and with competing developments also adding to the attractions
of places like Preston and Blackpool, this significant drain of money from
Lancaster will have a particularly detrimental impact on all the smaller
and independent retailers in Lancaster, who tend to feed off the shoppers
drawn in by the big name stores.
“By providing a department store –
Debenhams – and a wide range of other new shopping as well as cultural and
other facilities, we aim to build the city’s shopping attraction to the
point where local people will have little reason to travel elsewhere. That
will produce huge benefits by keeping tens of millions of pounds of local
retail spending from leaking out of the city, sustaining many more local
jobs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from people frequently
travelling long distances to shop elsewhere.”
Centros Miller
commissioned the opinion poll as a part of its extensive public
consultation programme on its development proposals – which has included
numerous meetings with the public and members of local interest groups.
ICM conducted the telephone survey of 1,000 local people living within the
Lancaster City Council boundaries from Friday 13th April to Wednesday 18th
April. A copy of ICM’s report will be published in Centros Miller’s full
consultation report, which will be submitted to Lancaster City Council as
part of the planning application to be made a few weeks time.
27th
April 2007 |
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