£200m Torbay town centres revamp unveiled

Work will begin in the New Year on a £200 million-plus ‘once-in-a-generation’ project to transform Torbay’s tired town centres.

Landmark buildings will be demolished and plans put forward for the biggest transformation of the bay for decades. Developers behind the ambitious project have pledged: “We will deliver.”

Torbay Council has spent the past year working with development partners Willmott Dixon and Milligan on a bay-wide package which will begin with the Union Square area of Torquay town centre.

It will be the biggest project of its kind in the resort since the demolition of the old Fleet Street for the Fleet Walk shopping centre in the late 1980s.

Family-owned construction company Willmott Dixon has already been involved in building hotels in Torquay. Milligan is a development company with a global reach.

The current Union Square shopping centre will go, to be replaced by new homes, businesses and a GP’s surgery. The town’s historic market will be retained.

The portfolio also includes the Strand and Torre Marine in Torquay, as well as Crossways and the Victoria Centre in Paignton. A new ‘high-end boutique hotel’ could be part of the Torquay harbourside blueprint to replace the derelict Debenhams store. Demolition could begin there late in 2025.

In total the projects could bring 700 new homes into the town centres along with gyms, leisure facilities, restaurants and medical centres.

“People in Torbay are desperate to see change,” said council deputy leader Chris Lewis (Con, Preston). “When people come back to see the bay in 10 years time, they won’t recognise the place.”

Council leader David Thomas (Con, Preston) said he hoped the town centre development would be a catalyst to bring in more investment.

And he added: “We stood on a manifesto of delivery last year. It’s really easy to talk about things and to promise things, but to deliver things is really hard, specially in the current environment.

“There has been quite a lot of criticism that we haven’t done anything yet, but we have been trying to get this deal right. It takes a little while to put it all together.

“This really is a once-in-a-generational opportunity for Torbay, and we hope the community share our enthusiasm and excitement for the changes on the not-too-distant horizon.”

The council has been in partnership with the developers for a year, drawing up the schemes.

It will apply for planning permission for the Union Square revamp next spring. The existing multi-storey car park will be retained, as will a market. However, the rest of the shopping centre will be replaced by homes, small businesses and a new centre for NHS services.

It already has £11 million of ‘Town Deal’ government funding allocated to it, and further public and private sector investment will be added to that. National pension funds are understood to be among the investors interested in the Torbay projects.

By the time planning applications are filed, the council will own all the properties involved. The full council will vote in December on a motion to allow the authority to buy buildings by compulsory purchase if necessary.

Demolition work on the Victoria Shopping Centre in Paignton will begin early in the new year, and the council is expected to lodge a fresh planning application for Crossways, including around 90 homes for supported living next summer.

Stuart Harris, chief executive of development company Milligan, said town centres all over the country are declining as a result of people’s changing shopping habits and the rise of online shopping.

The trend had left ‘huge vacancies’ in town centres, which provided a chance to give places like Torquay ‘a new vitality and a new identity’, he said.

And he said the fact that the portfolio contained several key sites rather than just one could make it more attractive to investors.

“The conversations we are having with large pension funds across the country give us every confidence that it will be delivered,” he added.

“They have multiple opportunities to invest across the UK, but it needs to be something of significant scale for them to be interested, and by pulling these sites together we are able to do that.”