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High Street summit sparked debate on Dundee city centre – here are our conclusions

The health of our high street matters - that's why the Courier data journalism team have produced a white paper on the current state of Dundee city centre.

Our High Street Summit event saw an audience of readers and local business owners enaging with a panel of experts. Image: Mhairi Edwards/DC Thomson.
Our High Street Summit event saw an audience of readers and local business owners enaging with a panel of experts. Image: Mhairi Edwards/DC Thomson.

The Courier data journalism team have been tracking the health of Dundee’s high streets for close to a year now.

In May we used that data to fuel action and hosted a live event at our Meadowside office – our High Street Summit.

We brought together an audience of readers and local business owners and assembled a panel comprised of council administration leader John Alexander, Chamber of Commerce president Kelly-Anne Fairweather, urban planning expert Dr Husam Alwaer, entrepreneur Ron Smith and executive director of the high street task force Matt Colledge.

The Courier's High Street Summit event featured The Courier editor David Clegg, Matt Colledge of Altrincham Forward, Dundee City Council leader John Alexander, Ron Smith of Glamis Investments, urban planning expert Dr Husam Alwaer and Dundee and Angus Chamber of Commerce president Kelly-Anne Fairweather, all pictured sitting on a platform before the crowd.
The Courier’s High Street Summit event featured The Courier editor David Clegg, Matt Colledge of Altrincham Forward, Dundee City Council leader John Alexander, Ron Smith of Glamis Investments, urban planning expert Dr Husam Alwaer and Dundee and Angus Chamber of Commerce president Kelly-Anne Fairweather. Image: Mhairi Edwards/DC Thomson.

The interaction between the audience and panel members made for a lively discussion.

Our high street campaign successfully led to Dundee City Council committing to providing an additional £200,000 to fund street cleaning to make the city centre a more inviting environment.

Levelling up, vacant units and our summit white paper on Dundee high street

There was also recently an announcement detailing a £20 million levelling up funding pot that had been allocated to Dundee.

The plans for this detail funding to spruce up vacant high street units as well as finding a permanent home for the Dundee Museum of Transport.

We’ve now compiled an in-depth analysis of all of our work so far into a white paper for subscribers.

Click the banner below to download it.

A banner stating: Read our High Street summit white paper

We will continue to track the progress of the issue of vacant units in our high streets and will keep our readers updated on whether the recent funding announcements are leading to positive movement in the data.

  • We’re always keen to hear from readers with comments or suggestions of data journalism that would make an impact in their communities. You can get in touch via email at lkelly@dcthomson.co.uk

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