The heart of Leighton Buzzard town centre is a traditional market town shopping area that will be enhanced by the redevelopment of the Land South of the High Street to create new residential homes, community facilities and spaces. With more people living in and around town centre it is expected to be able to maintain the number of retail units in the current town centre. To the north, the Waterborne Walk Shopping Centre and multistorey car park have expanded the commercial and retail area. Hockcliffe Street and North Street are also predominately providing typical town centre uses of land for retail purposes ( often with residential on upper floors) To the west beyond Bridge Street are located larger out of town “Big Box” retail premises in a more industrial setting; then, approaching Linslade a range of local shops clustered around Wing Road also provide valuable retail space for local businesses. The canal provides a key gateway to Leighton Buzzard to the east and Linslade to the West.

The adjacent land at Bridge Meadow will provide additional redevelopment opportunities for a mix of residential, community and commercial uses across the site.

The policy will respond to renewal and future development of these areas, determining the sense of identity in each and how that should be protected to reflect the historic development of Leighton Buzzard and Linslade. If future brownfield redevelopment opportunities come forward in the area between the two towns along Leighton Road, the policy will need to direct how can these strengthen the two areas, either to conjoin or separate them.

Once this is understood the policy area will evolve to consider defining how the land use of each area should develop, for example in some areas encouraging the retention of ground floors in active commercial use and discouraging changes of use on the ground floor of main high street frontages to residential uses may be appropriate. In other areas changes of use to residential may be appropriate.

The Central Bedfordshire Local Plan provides the policy space for the Neighbourhood Plan to create this spatial framework:

Maximise potential opportunities for the intensification and redevelopment and the regeneration of urban areas (Biggleswade, Dunstable, Houghton Regis, Flitwick, Leighton Linslade) through town centre frameworks or masterplans.

Local Plan Policy 5.4 Spatial Strategy