[Gayle]

House prices are rising and people are moving into the area because it's a very central location to a lot of major towns with motorways to all of those towns. Plus, it's rural so a lot of people who don't need to depend on being in an urban location are moving in - i.e. we've got one of the highest number of web designers in the UK aside from London.

The only drawback of all this is that these people don't shop in town centres. They either shop where they work or they shop in out of town stores at the weekend or they shop on line.

But to bring people in you don't need the big stores. You need to be a specialist town i.e. the best place to get cheese, or the furniture capital or the arts centre. You get a reputation for something specific and some of the chain stores would return.