3:31pm Tuesday 9th February 2010
By Neil Skinner
Mayor Dorothy Thornhill has responded to suggestions by the town’s MP that the Queen’s Road area risks becoming a “poor relation” to the town centre.
Mayor Thornhill, speaking to the Watford Observer this afternoon, was responding to comments made by MP Claire Ward at a residents' meeting last night.
Ms Ward, addressing a meeting of the Queen’s Road Community Action Group, said residents should lobby Watford Borough Council for inclusion in a multimillion pound scheme to improve the image of the town.
Mayor Thornhill, however, argued that this was not possible as the council owned no land in the area.
The three clusters earmarked in the masterplan (Watford Town Centre Cultural Study), she explained, were largely under direct council control, allowing it to take the drastic action required.
She said: “I really sympathise with the problems in Queen’s Road but the council has no land ownership in the area so we have very little power to make changes other than to the public realm.
“Anything that we can do we will do, such as improving lighting and making the underpass safer. But what we can’t do is force landlords to rent out their shops or businesses to move in.”
Mayor Thornhill added that all local authorities would have greater power to address run-down areas if they had direct control of the business rates – 90 per cent of which are currently pocketed by central government and redistributed around the country.
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/trade_directory/