Preston Guild City

Investment and regeneration in Preston: the City Deal

What is being built, what has been finished, and what the argument behind it is.

Visualisation of the University of Central Lancashire masterplan in Preston
Fig. 01 — the university masterplan, the largest single project in the centre

Preston has been rebuilding parts of its centre for over a decade, and the programme is coherent enough to be worth setting out as one thing, not as a list of sites. This section covers the physical half of the city's economic strategy; the financial and institutional half is in the journal's business strand.

The framing document is the City Deal, an agreement covering infrastructure across Preston and central Lancashire, and most of what has happened since sits under or alongside it.

The programme in outline

Four things dominate. The City Deal is the funding and infrastructure framework. The markets quarter is the city centre regeneration area around the market site. The university masterplan is the largest single build. And the bus station is the one that was saved as opposed to replaced.

Alongside them sit the residential and hotel conversions — Corporation Street, the former post office — and the long-running question of the railway station.

Why the programme exists

The honest account starts with retail. Comparison shopping left Preston's centre for Deepdale Shopping Park and Capitol Centre, as it left every English city centre of this size, and no amount of pedestrian remodelling reverses that.

A centre that has lost the convenience argument has to offer something else, and the programme is an attempt to make that something else out of the market site, the heritage fabric, the university and city-centre living. Whether it works is a longer question than this section answers.

Regeneration timetables slip

It carries no costs, no completion dates and no claim that a given scheme is currently on site. Regeneration timetables slip, funding is re-profiled and schemes are reshaped, and a page repeating a figure or a date from a previous year would be misleading about the one thing readers most want to know.

What it records is what each project is and why it is being done. For status, the council and the developers publish their own.

How the sheets below are ordered

The order is not a ranking. It runs from the framework outward: the funding and infrastructure agreement first, then the areas it pays for, then the individual buildings inside those areas, and finally the two sheets that describe how the programme is governed and how it presents itself to outside money. Reading down the list therefore moves from the general to the particular, and a scheme that appears late in the list is not a smaller scheme.

Each scheme sheet is written to the same shape. It says what the scheme is, where in the city it sits, which of the four states it is in, and what has actually happened, not what was announced. Where a scheme has changed hands, changed name or changed purpose, the sheet says so, because a regeneration programme that has run for more than a decade accumulates schemes that are no longer the thing they were first called.

What none of the sheets carry is a completion date for anything unfinished. Dates on schemes of this size move, and a date that has moved is worse than no date: it reads as current when it is not. Where a phase has demonstrably finished, the sheet says it has finished.

One layer of the investment picture is neither property nor scheme: the bodies that put businesses in a room with each other. The business networks sheet sets out what kinds the city has, and the business events sheet covers the space they meet in.

An architectural visualisation of a new commercial building in Preston
Fig. 02 — a scheme visualisation; the programme is drawings before it is buildings

Questions about Investment and regeneration in Preston

What is the Preston City Deal?

An infrastructure and funding agreement covering Preston and central Lancashire. It is the framework most of the city's regeneration since sits under or alongside.

What is the biggest development in Preston city centre?

The University of Central Lancashire masterplan is the largest single build. The markets quarter is the largest regeneration area.

Why is Preston rebuilding its city centre?

Because comparison retail left the centre for the out-of-centre retail parks, as it did in every English city of this size. A centre that has lost the convenience argument has to offer something else.

Does this section give project costs and completion dates?

No. Regeneration timetables slip and funding is re-profiled; a page repeating a figure from a previous year would mislead about exactly what readers most want to know.