Market Towns

Chapter 4Policies for market towns

Trevor Hart

Introduction

Market towns have only recently become a focus of interest and intervention for policy makers. They first emerged in the UK as a theme in the Rural White Paper in 1995 (DoE and MAFF 1995) and this area of policy was further developed in the second Rural White Paper in 2000 (MAFF and DETR 2000). One reason for this interest could be found in the changing economic roles and fortunes of market towns and the threat posed to the economic and social fabric of the settlements. Another significant but related reason concerns the role of market towns as rural service centres, and their ability to continue to perform this role in the face of changes in patterns of retailing and the centralisation ...