The Roysse Room has been repainted and revarnished, and was open for the Abingdon-on-Thames Annual Parish Meeting – a chance for England’s newly renamed Abingdon-on-Thames Town Council to present what has happened in the past year and their vision …

The new leader of the council, Sandy Lovatt, told us a bit about his philosophy, and explained how the local economy is built on three independent supports: the social, the cultural, and the economic – represented by the three legs of a stool.

We then had a presentation by NewRiver Retail Ltd who run the Abbey Shopping Centre on behalf of Scottish Widows.

NewRiver Retail look after 14 shopping centres for Scottish Widows, two of which are under their direct control: Abingdon and Crewe.

They had a progress report on the phase 1 redevelopment of the Abbey Shopping Centre in Abingdon… contractors have  taken up residence in unit 10 and will start work in April 2012 – a slight delay for legal reasons.

The work should be completed by November – prior to Christmas. Along with other architectural improvements, five smaller units are being knocked down to make two larger shops providing the sort of floor space to attract national fashion retailers.

After the presentation, questions came about phase 2 – the redevelopment of the Charter. This would involve relocating the library (cultural) and health centre (social possibly) to make way for a new big anchor store (economic). The anchor store would bring in the money to make phase 2 happen. But people in the audience were asking the serious question as to whether this is the best thing for the future of Abingdon (socially and culturally and economically).

Just to say that in my opinion I think people would probably prefer a department store (John Lewis, Debenhams, M&S) as an anchor  but NewRiver Retail said the economic reality is that it would be a supermarket.