Welcome to the war zone
In 2018 South Somerset District Council announced a flagship town centre regeneration programme for Yeovil. It could have gone so well. Instead the town is suffering....
Somerset Confidential® special SC 25
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Welcome to the war zone
The good citizens of Yeovil have not had much to be happy about of late. The closure of Pittards dealt a major blow to employment in the town. Wilko has entered administration and although some stores are to be saved, it is unclear if Yeovil will be one of them (it is not on the list of stores to be saved by either B&M or Poundland). The football club was relegated again last year, although fans seem to have taken some comfort that former owner, Scott Priestnell was persuaded to sell the club to a local businessman, Martin Hellier.
At least they don’t live in a war zone. Everything is relative.
The town of Yeovil may be a thriving country down in rural Somerset at its heart but walking through the centre of Yeovil today, between the craters and the rubble, you might be forgiven for thinking that this is indeed a war zone.
It is now five years since South Somerset District Council (SSDC) embarked on ambitious plans to enhance the look of the town centre. Focusing mostly on what councils like to call “the public realm” or the “street scene” the plans would see the whole of the town centre tidied up.
So what’s it actually like today?
We arrive by bus. After all politicians are urging us to go green and use public transport, and in Yeovil that means the bus. Whether it is to get from Yeovil Junction rail station (some 2 miles from the town centre), or from the surrounding villages directly to the bus station, public transport here means using the bus for all or part of the journey.
The first sight that greets the new arrival is the decaying brutalist 60s architecture of Glovers Walk which has few remaining businesses and a lot of empty boarded up units….. And this boarded up café:
It is hardly the perfect greeting to the town. Yet in this area, arguably the most important gateway to the town, there have been no plans within the Yeovil Refresh project for renovation and refreshing. The escalators up to the Quedam Centre, one of the few area of the town not to be blighted by closures or Yeovil Refresh renovation work, have been shut down. The only way into central Yeovil is through the middle of the various “works”.
“it looks as if a bomb has hit it”
Pretty soon as you make your way into the centre you come to a fenced off building site dominating Middle Street. This is the Triangle, a chunk of prime real estate that is supposedly going to become an amphitheatre with supersized screen and tiered seating. Currently you could say without fear of exaggeration, it looks as if a bomb has hit it.