Our town centre’s are spaces that we all visit and explore for both work and leisure. Scotland’s Town Toolkit is designed to be a source of inspiration for anyone who wants to make their town centre better including local authorities, community groups and businesses. The aim of the resource is to be a toolkit for successful town centres across Scotland.

Launched in the summer of 2021 the Toolkit was developed by Scottish Town’s Partnership with support from the Scottish Government and over 200 contributing organizations. The Toolkit pulls together a range of information and guidance from across Scotland. The toolkit is full of tried and tested ideas to help your town centre, including recovery from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is important that our communities learn from other towns to overcome the challenges that can be faced in developing town centre initiatives, projects or redevelopments. The Town Toolkit highlights exemplar town centre projects and ideas from all over Scotland and is a useful tool for inspiration.

- Audrey Michie, Service Lead, Sustainable Communities, Angus Council

To make the toolkit useable it is divided in to seven sections.

If you are not sure where to start the Toolkit provides inspiration (https://towntoolkit.scot/inspiration/introduction) through a number of stories from town centres across Scotland including some informative videos such as the creation of the Huntley and District Development Trust

The next 5 sections provide the bulk of the toolkit. There are split in to specific areas that focus on specific areas of developmental areas within town centres and bring together information and resources from a range of different organisations.

1. Arts and Culture
2. Buildings and Property
3. Clean and Green
4. Enterprise and Business
5. Streets and Spaces

Each section is then split down further in to targeted sections covering practical suggestions to help your town centre be active, attractive and accessible, examples drawn from around Scotland and other resources such as information, guides and funding.

The Clean and Green along with Streets and Spaces sections are of particular interest to the greenspace sector. The section includes resources created by greenspace scotland, living streets, Architecture and Design Scotland.

The Spaces for People section within Streets and Spaces highlights methods of harnessing the energy of young people with resources including Young Placechangers Toolkit and This Must Be Our Place Toolkit.

The final Taking Action section is all about turning ideas and plans in to action focusing on collaboration, planning, resources and delivery.

One of the major strengths of the Toolkit is that the Resources highlighted within the Toolkit have been developed by a wide cohort of groups that are experts in their field. This is linked to real examples of developments within a range of town centres from across Scotland. We are delighted that our Young Placechangers toolkit and case studies are included in the many resources.

Visit TOWNTOOLKIT.scot