MP for Harborough Neil O’Brien is pressing Harborough District Council to green Market Harborough town centre by planting more trees.
The MP is calling on councillors to use government funding from the Shared Prosperity Fund to plant trees on the High Street and elsewhere.
Neil said:
“Market Harborough has a wonderful town centre with lots of independent shops, and despite the challenges, it is doing much better than many other town centres, where internet shopping is taking a heavy toll.
But we should always be looking to improve Market Harborough, and one of the best evidenced things that makes a place more pleasant for people is to plant more trees.
The High Street in particular has potential to have some more trees on it, which would work well with the fact that there are now a number of pavement cafes there.
I hope that Harborough District will use some of the flexible Shared Prosperity Fund money it received from central government to get more trees into the town centre. They take up very little room, so would have negligible effect on the handy parking on the high street.
A while back I introduced officers from the council to experts from the regeneration charity Create Streets, and as well as giving us some really interesting ideas about improving the town centre they also created some artists impressions of what the town centre could look like.
I hope that the new administration will restart work on town centre improvement and use some of the central government funding they’ve received to green the town centre.”
