Wellington Soup site launched to improve town Robert loves

Robert Francis, a social policy research consultant from Wellington, has launched the website Wellington Soup to share ideas on how to re-energise the town he loves.

If Robert, 30, had the Mary Portas magic wand, what would he do?

Towns need to feel busy, have an air of business, he says. Empty shops and empty spaces do not attract people.

• Read Robert's blog - The Walker Street revival starts here: a view from the future

"The High Street needs to be more flexible. She is saying that the High Street is a social space. Only during the Victorian period did they become primary retail spaces.

"In vacant shops we could have pop-up galleries, if only for a month or so. We could use them for museums, training, or for community activities. Have zumba, it would bring a social element into the town."

Robert adds: "What's happening in some market towns is that they have come to feel lethargic."

Bringing people into the town socially would also benefit other businesses, he says.

"Perhaps we need to re-define the identity of a town; what are we? We are not Telford, we are not Shrewsbury or Ludlow."

He agrees that town centres cannot stay the same as they were 40 or 50 years ago. He says Wellington changed when Telford was developed.

Until then people from the area did all their shopping in Wellington.

Towns that lost some of their identity when they were swamped with retail giants, who have suddenly decided to pull out, have are arguably suffering the most.

"Places that have never had them have kept going, while other places suffer from having had too many big retailers that have left.

"On one hand you cannot expect people to be charitable, but on the other people need to be getting something different from the high street stores than from out of town or online shops, better quality and customer service, and they need to feel more ownership of their town."