The City Centre

Norwich city centre is defined in this plan as the area within the city walls, with the addition of Riverside, and areas around the railway station, Norwich City Football Club, and south of the bus station. This is illustrated in map 9 below.

Norwich city centre is the pre-eminent regional centre in the East of England, focused on a historic city centre with a wealth of heritage assets and an unrivalled historic and natural environment. It accommodates the majority of jobs, key services and economic, leisure and cultural facilities serving much of Norfolk and north Suffolk. It is within the top 15 retail destinations in the UK¹⁰³. The established approach to planning for Norwich city centre has been cited as an example of best practice by Government.

To date, Norwich city centre has proved remarkably resilient in adapting to the unprecedented challenges arising from wider societal changes in employment patterns, shopping habits and leisure activities.

Policy 7.1 details how development will help to shape the city centre to 2038. The centre must continue to be planned in a way which enhances, protects and makes the best use of its distinctive assets and ensures that it remains the focus for the high-value jobs, services and facilities. A strong, vibrant, attractive and thriving city centre is critical to attracting investment in Greater Norwich as the key driver of the area’s economy and to supporting the delivery of housing and other development across the plan area.

As changes will inevitably continue, policy 7.1 takes a flexible long-term approach to continuing to promote a vibrant city centre in the context of the decline of high street shopping and the growth of online retailing which is further impacted by Covid-19 and its economic consequences. This flexible approach allows for:

• the expansion and diversification of city centre uses, with retail combining with other uses to foster an attractive and distinctive living and working environment;
• conserving and enhancing the historic and natural environment
• encouraging housing on all suitable city centre sites as part of mixed-use development;
• actively promoting and integrating new retail and other town centre uses in the city centre and resisting out of centre developments;
• attracting and retaining employment in the city centre and resisting loss of office floorspace;
• managing shopping frontages to effectively adapt to change and protect their vibrancy, diversity and attractiveness;
• mitigating the impact of traffic and improving accessibility and connectivity for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport.

The city centre has the potential to consolidate existing economic sectors as set out in policy 6 and detailed in this policy, such as finance, insurance and retailing, and support significant further growth in key economic sectors, including, ICT/digital culture industries, leisure and tourism. Evidence shows that the character of the city core and property typology are well suited to tech firms and knowledge intensive businesses that function well within city locations that support face to face working.£25 million secured in late 2020 from the Government’s Towns Fund will assist in the development of a digital hub, as part of wider investment in the city on transport, infrastructure and skills.

The city centre also offers considerable potential for brownfield development to promote physical and economic regeneration in areas where there has been long-term decline.

The ongoing revitalisation of the King Street and Mountergate area has been a notable success, with more sites allocated in this area though this plan to secure further regeneration.