WHO RUNS BRADFORD?

Number 1: City Centre Management

Bradford, Wolverhampton, Gravesend - it's becoming harder to tell the difference between our towns and cities. The same architecture, the same shops, the same policies; pedestrianisation, commercialisation, CCTV.

But this is no coincidence - it's the work of "Town Centre Management" - a movement set up by major retail corporations Boots and Marks & Spencers. Their aim is to reshape our towns and cities on the model of the "Out of Town Shopping Centre".

The two retail giants, who have a joint annual turnover in excess of £10 billion, were concerned at the loss of trade to Out of Town shopping centres, which threatened their own Town Centre assets and, of course, their profits. They joined forces to try and reverse the trend and, in effect, turn whole Town and City Centres into pseudo shopping malls.

Now, well over 150 towns and cities have their own "Town Centre Management" team - quangos run and financed by an unholy partnership of Company and Council. Bradford, Shipley, Bingley and Keighley have their own, headed by "Town Centre Managers", financed from the public purse, and run by secretive and unelected "steering groups".

They are supported centrally by "The Association of Town Centre Management" based in Westminster. With a budget of half a million pounds, they furnish each local group with a ready built set of Guides, models and policies. Over 400 organisations and individuals make up the current national membership, but this is changing as the Association steers its membership "towards being predominantly corporate rather than individual".

In Bradford, Boots and M&S are joined in their enterprise by Prudential Portfolio Managers (owners of the Kirkgate Centre). The City Centre Management "Steering Group" also includes Bradford Council; Bradford TEC (in whose H.Q. at Mercury House the Centre Management is based); Bradford Retail Action group (who share the same office); and Bradford Congress - the secretive and powerful quango which claims the City Centre Management Steering Group as one of its own "sub-committees".

90% of the Centre Management's core funding - over £100,000 - comes straight from Council coffers.

Bradford City Centre Management was formally set up in April 1993, 2 years after the formation of the National Association. The first City Centre Manager, Richard Willoughby, made his mark persecuting local community "flyposting" whilst turning a blind eye to the equally illicit but far more profitable corporate flyposting business. He is now Investment Unit Manager for the Councils EID. The current manager is Elaine Frances.

Keighley and Shipley followed suit a year later, with Shipley getting its own Manager in 1996. Bingley has a centre manager seconded from Barclays Bank. Each town has its own carefully selected "Steering Group"; each is financed almost entirely from Council funds; and each has been primarily concerned to date with the installation of town centre "Spy Camera" systems.

It is the Town Centre Management movement's role in the promotion of public CCTV systems that is responsible for Britain fast becoming the "Surveillance Society" of the western world. It is no surprise, therefore, to find that former MI5 boss Stella Rimmington now sits as a director on the board of Marks & Spencers.

See City Centre scams: No 1 - J C Decaux "street furniture"

See ATCM website

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