Why I am amending the Town Forum motion

A few weeks ago I wrote about why Bray needs a town team. On Tuesday, that idea comes to Bray Municipal District as a Notice of Motion, but not quite in the form I'd hoped, so I put forward an amendment last week.

What's on the agenda

The motion on Tuesday's agenda, proposed by a colleague, welcomes the Government's decision to change the functions and structure of local government, including establishing new Municipal Councils in larger towns, and proposes that Bray MD set up a Town Centre Forum to discuss strengthening Bray town centre as a retail destination. As drafted, it would be chaired by the Cathaoirleach, include all elected members plus the Bray Chamber of Commerce, Bray Retailers Group, the Alliance of Bray Residents Associations and Bray Tidy Towns Committee, and would produce an Action Plan for the council to implement.

I welcome the instinct behind it completely. It's the same instinct behind my own post a few weeks ago: no one body, council, landlords, traders or residents, can fix Main Street alone, and we need a structure that gets everyone around the same table. Where I part ways with the motion as written is in the model it reaches for.

Why I'm not supporting it as it stands

My concern is a practical one. A Forum that meets, discusses, and produces an Action Plan is a genuinely useful thing to have, but on its own, it has no route into the funding that actually turns a plan into a project. As I set out in my last post, there's real money on the table nationally for exactly this kind of work: the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund, the Town and Village Renewal Scheme, the Historic Towns Initiative, and others, all channelled through the Town Centre First programme via a Town Regeneration Officer and a Town Centre First Plan. A locally invented Forum, however well-intentioned, isn't the vehicle that unlocks those doors. A Town Team is.

I don't want Bray to end up with a group that meets in good faith, produces a wish list, and then finds itself with no resources to act on it. We'd have spent the goodwill of traders, landlords and residents giving up their evenings, and have nothing to show for it except a document. Given how much is already competing for people's time and patience in this town, I think we owe it to everyone who'd sit around that table to plug straight into a model that's already proven it can deliver.

The amendment I'm proposing

Instead, I'm proposing that we amend the motion to read:

That this Council welcomes the Government decision to implement changes to the functions and structures of local government, specifically in deciding to establish new Municipal Councils in larger towns.

In this regard, the Bray Municipal District members agree to establish a Town Team to discuss the future strengthening of Bray town centre.

The chairing arrangements, elected members attending, and the wider membership of the Town Team will be determined through agreed terms of reference, building on those previously drafted, and may include organisations such as the Bray Chamber of Commerce, Bray Retailers Group, the Alliance of Bray Residents Associations and Bray Tidy Towns Committee.

The Town Team will conduct a town centre health check to establish a clear, evidence-based picture of Bray town centre. This health check will inform the development of a Bray Town Centre Masterplan, which can then be used as the basis for applying for available grant funding.

The membership largely mirrors the original motion — this isn't about excluding anyone who was going to be at that table. The changes are structural, and they matter:

• "Town Team" instead of "Town Centre Forum". This isn't a semantic preference. Town Team is the recognised national model, piloted in Roscommon and rolled out across the country, that's specifically wired into Town Centre First funding. Calling it a Forum, however similar in practice, doesn't get us access to a Town Regeneration Officer, the Town Team Support Fund, or the funding streams that follow from a proper Town Centre First Plan.
• A health check before an action plan. Roscommon's town teams didn't start by brainstorming ideas, they started by establishing an honest, evidence-based picture of what a town actually has and needs. I did an informal version of that myself for Bray Main Street: 32 empty units, and a business mix increasingly narrowed to hairdressers, cafés and charity shops. That kind of audit shouldn't be a one-off exercise by a single councillor. It should be the Team's first, standing piece of work, so that whatever comes next is built on facts rather than impressions.
• A Masterplan as the output, not just an Action Plan. A Masterplan is the specific document that funders expect to see before they'll release money. It's the difference between a list of good ideas and something a URDF or RRDF application can actually be built around.
• Building on work already done. Terms of reference for a town team model already exist nationally, and there may be earlier local work to draw on too. There's no reason to start from a blank page when a working template already exists.

What happens next

I'll be putting this amendment forward when the item is discussed on Tuesday. My hope is that my colleagues back a version of this motion that doesn't just discuss Bray town centre, but actually gives us a route to the funding that's sitting there for towns that have the structure in place to ask for it. Every euro of that funding that goes to another town instead of Bray is one we didn't have to lose.