MP: Town centres need to evolve (From Thurrock Gazette)

So that's our MP's advice is it. Give the town centre over to students that have very little money to spend and will sit in a fast food outlet for an hour with a can of coke and and a horse burger because they have no money to do anything else. The market is crap because it now sells tat that nobody wants to buy. Most of the original market stall holders are gone because they saw the writing on the wall. Thurrock and in particular towns like Grays have no community any more. It is a soulless place full of ghetto's and separate groups of people that want nothing to do with each other. It is a typical London borough. Nobody in their right minds wants to live in Grays town centre any more. People move out to the peripheries and accept Grays is dead. Destroyed by the last Labour government and TTGDC. The real local residents should let it become what Labour wanted. Another shell full of fast food outlets, monet transfer shops, black hairderessers and shops that serve the immigrant population. Let it die the death it deserves.

All I see this woman do is moan and tell us what is failing. I thought it was her job to do something about things, but apparently not.

That is the problem with most politicians, they let their mouths move, but do no action.

Sad but true, ebagumtrebor. The people who inhabited the happy little town of my youth have been replaced, just as the politicians wanted...

Grays needs free parking all day round

A bigger, more extensive market. Rather than placing a new market in Corringham we should enlarge Grays market. Advertise pitches for local tradesman rather than the current stock, many of whom have poor English.

Get rid of the one way system. It's pointless.

Improve/enhance the railway station. It's grim and gives a negative impression of the town.

Only allow a reasonable selection of ethnic shops to open up. This is not East London and we should not be taking inspiration from socialist bastion boroughs such as Newham and Hackney where every other shop has a fruit and veg stall outside, while the other is a chicken shop.

Grays needs a decent pub. A Whetherspoons would be a start. This may come as the new campus opens making it a more attractive place to open up a pub.

Create some form of uniformity with the shops on the High Street.

Get rid of the drunks.

More police patrolling the town centre. This should be easy considering the police station is a stonesthrow away.

Add some greenery, trees and flowers as well as knocking down the derelict old gym near the church and creating some open space.

Solid uses should be found for The State and the old courthouse.

Grays is a large town with areas of varying incomes and the town centre should cater for this. There are people in Chafford, North Grays, Orsett, North Stifford who very rarely venture into Grays as there is nothing there for them. Until this balance is addressed the place will continue to decline. In other words it needs money spent on it if it is to survive as a decent shopping area.

Grays High street was doomed when even the MacDonalds closed down!

When a town has no Whetherspoons and/or MacDonalds that can only be a bad sign. Grays would be more attractive to businesses if the council stepped up the pressure on them.

For example: Pizza Hut has one outlet and one restuarant in Lakeside, and have recently refurbished another restuarant in the retail park. Surely a Pizza Hut would do relatively well in Grays? But instead they have three restuarants within one small location.