One of the things that strikes me whenever I walk around Bacup is how close everything actually is.
If you stand in the market and look towards Morrisons, Aldi or B&M, none of them are particularly far away. Equally, if you are parked at one of the supermarkets, the market and town centre are only a few minutes’ walk away. Yet despite being so close together, they can often feel like separate places rather than parts of the same destination.
That might not sound important, but I think it is.
When people talk about bringing more visitors into town centres, the conversation often turns towards marketing campaigns, events or finding ways to attract people from elsewhere. There is nothing wrong with those ideas, but Bacup already attracts a significant number of visitors every day. Hundreds of people drive into town to visit Aldi, Morrisons and B&M. The question is not whether people are coming to Bacup. The question is whether we are making the most of the people who are already here.
In many ways, the supermarkets already provide Bacup’s main parking facilities. People use them when visiting the supermarkets themselves, but they are also used by people heading into town. Unlike many other places, Bacup benefits from having a large amount of parking within easy walking distance of the market and the wider town centre. That is a real asset and one that many towns would be pleased to have.
The difficulty comes once people leave their cars.
The walk between the supermarkets and the market area is perfectly possible, but it doesn’t always feel particularly inviting. In places, the route is narrow. In others, it is dominated by vehicles. There is little to signal that you are moving through what is effectively one town centre. Instead, the experience can feel like moving between a series of disconnected places.
This matters because people experience towns through journeys rather than maps.
A map might show that two places are only a few hundred metres apart, but if the route between them feels unattractive, inconvenient or unclear, many people simply won’t make the journey. They will do what they came to do and then head home.
That is one of the reasons I think there is a strong case for creating a pedestrian promenade linking the supermarkets with the town centre.
When people hear ideas like this, they sometimes assume it means closing roads, banning cars or making life more difficult for businesses. I don’t think that follows at all. Bacup is a market town. People need to be able to drive into it, park in it, make deliveries and access local businesses. The issue is not whether vehicles should be present. The issue is whether we have got the balance right between vehicles and people.
The most successful retail destinations tend to make it easy for people to move between different places. Retail parks understand this well. People arrive, park once and then comfortably walk between multiple businesses. The easier that experience is, the more likely people are to browse, stop somewhere unexpected and spend money in places they had not originally intended to visit.
Bacup already has most of those ingredients. We have the parking. We have the supermarkets. We have the market. We have independent businesses. We have cafés, pubs, community facilities and a town centre rich in character and history. What we do not always have is a route that encourages people to move easily between them.
That is where a pedestrian promenade could make a real difference. Wider pavements, better crossing points, improved signage, seating, planting and a more consistent public realm would not transform the town overnight. However, together they could create a route that feels like a natural extension of the town centre rather than simply a way of getting from one place to another.
The interesting thing about this idea is that it is not really about walking. It is about connection.
For years, there has been a tendency to think of the supermarkets, the market and the traditional shopping streets or Irwell Terrace as separate destinations. In reality, they are all part of the same town centre economy. Every additional person who walks from the supermarkets into town is another potential customer for a local business. Every extra shop window somebody passes is another opportunity for them to discover something they were not expecting to find.
Places are strongest when their different parts work together rather than competing with one another. The supermarkets bring people into Bacup. The market, independent businesses and town centre give people reasons to stay. The more effectively those things are connected, the stronger the whole town becomes.
Perhaps the real question is not whether Bacup needs a pedestrian promenade. Perhaps the question is whether we can afford to leave one of the town’s biggest opportunities for increasing footfall, supporting local businesses and encouraging people to explore more of what Bacup has to offer sitting right in front of us.
