Big ideas for renewal, but who will see them through?

On the eve of his party’s conference in Manchester, Rishi Sunak announced details of a new plan to revitalise town centres across the UK. A total of £1.1 billion is going to the 55 towns selected, seven of them in Scotland, over the next ten years. One is my home town, Greenock.

Last January, its council, Inverclyde, was a successful bidder in an earlier round of the UK government’s Levelling Up Fund, securing £19.4 million to rectify a previous development that had in effect made cars a priority over citizens and split a once-thriving town centre in two.

Sunak accuses other unspecified politicians of always taking towns for granted and focusing on cities.

“The result is the half-empty high streets, run-down shopping centres and anti-social