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The Constant Monitoring And Assessment Of These Health Checks Will Allow The ...

The constant monitoring and assessment of these health checks will allow the local planning authority to monitor the success, or failure, of the in-town centre developments, in order to adjust their planning as necessary in response to changes that are happening. One feature of some in-town shopping centre developments, for example, is out-of-establishment drinking (on the streets, for example); with enforced regulations banning drinking on the streets, however, this problem would be tamed, and the streets would be returned to normality.
Post-1999, following the publication of the Government's new planning policy, and in the years immediately following this, eight in-town shopping centres were built in the UK: the Buchanan Galleries in Glasgow (opened in 1999), The Chimes in Uxbridge (opened in 2001), Festival Place in Basingstoke (opened in 2002), The New Bullring in Birmingham (opened in 2003), The Oracle in Reading (opened in 1999), Overgate Centre in Dundee (opened in 2000), Touchwood in Solihull (opened in 2001) and West Quay in Southampton (opened in 2000). All of these in-town shopping centres provided, in total, around half a million square metres of retail space, and their success prompted the construction of other, similar, centres within town centre spaces. This flood of in-town shopping centres has been termed a ‘new wave of retail centralisation' (Crosby et al., 2005).
Festival Place in Basingstoke opened in 2002, with one hundred and sixty five retail outlets, and several large department stores, including BHS and Marks and Spencer. It also boasts a cinema and a nightclub and hosts the site of the town's library amongst its 600,000 square feet of prime retail space. The shopping centre is right in the town centre, very close to transport links such as the railway; in addition, the bus station for the town is incorporated within the bounds of the shopping centre, and two major motorways are very close also, with nearly four thousand car parking spaces for people arriving by car. It has been a successful development for its owners, Grosvenor Estates, by all accounts, and is regularly ranked amongst the top three UK in-town shopping centres.
The Oracle in Reading was the first of the in-town shopping centres to be built, in response to the Government's Planning Policy Statement Number 6. The shopping centre complex was built on a former brewery site, which crosses the River Kennett, and work was begun on the development in 1994, although it took several years for planning permission to be granted, with the first phase not being completed until 1999.


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