The Transforming Leamington project has recently carried out a thorough public engagement process to harvest views from residents about the future of their town. Part of this process was a meeting with the Warwickshire Youth Council who imparted a valuable perspective of their generation. Warwickshire Youth Council member Amelie Barker reports. 

Recently, I was invited to take part in a planning event for improvements to Leamington Town Centre, alongside other members of Warwickshire Youth Council.

We first looked at plans from other towns and cities and discussed what would be achievable in Leamington. We also talked about what we currently liked about the Leamington town centre, and features that we liked from other towns, before annotating maps with our ideas for how Leamington could be improved.

One issue that we raised was the environmental effect that traffic was having in Leamington Town Centre and how this would be improved if we could divert traffic away from the main street of the parade. We would love to see a pedestrian zone on the parade to reduce pollution and also reduce crowding on the pavement.

Something else that I'd like to see would be more lighting at the bottom of town, as this is an area that young people often don't feel safe in. Furthermore, we discussed having local art in different positions around the town to create more of a community feel.

Overall it was a great experience, and it was so interesting to find out what goes into planning improvements for towns. Our ideas were definitely listened to and have helped to form the new vision for Leamington Town Centre.