It’s great to be updating you on the recent work being achieved locally on the Love Gillingham campaign. This is the first of my updates for 2025, and I’ll be regularly keeping you up to date throughout the year on the progress being made to transform our town centre.
As the MP for Gillingham and Rainham, having started this campaign as a councillor and launched the Gillingham Taskforce last year, I want residents to be proud of our high street. There is so much opportunity for our area to become a hub of activity, with thriving local business, celebrating the best that Gillingham has to offer.
Moving towards this goal requires collaboration from a broad range of local stakeholders. Our recent Gillingham Town Centre Taskforce meeting in late January brought together representatives from Medway Council, Kent Police, Medway Norse and other organisations to discuss current issues and receive updates on local work.
Maintaining clean streets has been a longstanding target. Our enforcement officers have been ensuring that littering is caught and punished, with 91 fines allocated between July 2024-January 2025. These actions highlight that littering will not be tolerated as we move towards maintaining a cleaner town centre. To build on this work we’re also exploring the opportunity to host a community-tidy up this spring to promote a tidy and litter-free high street, with exact dates to be confirmed.
Funding-wise, Medway’s Shared Prosperity Fund has seen over £14,000 awarded to Celebrating St Alban’s, Gillingham project, while £5,000 has been awarded to help develop a feasibility study into the creation of a Gillingham Design Code. This code will give us more control in the future aesthetic look and feel of the town centre, ensuring development respects the area’s unique heritage, landscapes and character.
At 6.2%, Gillingham is comparatively better than the national high street average of 16% when it comes to the number of empty shops, yet there is more work required to make sure we’re fully utilising our town centre. I am having regular discussions with government ministers and local authorities to see how we can reclaim and renovate vacant property to the benefit of residents.
Finally, I’m delighted to announce that the Love Gillingham Summer Event will be taking place on Sunday, July 20 2025. There’s much more to come on this event, but we’re looking forward to bringing everyone together to celebrate our town centre and its wonderful community.