Ashford MP Damian Green reacts to town centre survey results

One in three Ashford residents are calling for Primark to open in their “ghost town”.

Transcript

00:00 I was delighted to get 1,200 replies, so it's a decent representation of the views of people

00:06 who use Ashford Town Centre and indeed some who don't use it often enough because quite a lot of

00:12 people, about a third, said they go in less than once a month. It's up to the individual

00:17 retailers themselves where they put shops but I will be contacting Primark and at least one other

00:26 company that were mentioned to see if there's any chance of getting them to consider doing what

00:32 clearly people in Ashford want. Apart from Primark, the other shop that people really wanted

00:39 was Marks and Spencer and of course there was one until fairly recently in the town centre and

00:46 that's closed down so I can see why people would like to have a Marks and Spencer back in the town

00:53 but it's true that Primark was overwhelmingly the favourite, the one thing that would change the

01:00 level of footfall in the town centre. It would be a huge boost certainly and I agree with everyone

01:05 that obviously since Debenhams closed that store along with a lot of other stores, I mean it was a

01:11 Debenhams problem not an Ashford problem, but obviously that's a big vacant space that would

01:17 be ideal for Primark. Obviously it's a matter for them how much of it they would want to fill

01:23 if they decide to come to Ashford but certainly that's an obvious space to do it because then

01:30 that would act not just in terms of getting people into the Primark but also into all the other shops

01:37 in County Square. I think to have a properly thriving town centre you want a mix of different

01:46 types of shops and one of the interesting things people said that apart from Primark and Marks and

01:51 Spencer the third most popular category was just a general department store. I think people do feel

01:58 the lack of a department store in Ashford town centre.