It is a transformation which will make the northeast town of Stockton-on-Tees almost unrecognisable – and which may, advocates say, signal a new future for British towns and cities.

Next year, the sprawling Castlegate shopping centre, which has dominated the high street here for half a century, will be demolished and replaced with a vast public park three times the size of Trafalgar Square.

The mall’s multi-storey car park and dozens of shops, as well as an adjacent hotel, will be bulldozed into history. In their place will come one of the North of England’s biggest urban oases: five acres of grassed lawns, wild habitats, play areas and picnic spots.

If the £37m vision – set to be officially approved next week – is unequivocally bold, it is only the most notable of a whole raft of similar projects currently being green-lit by various local authorities.

Across the UK, such outdoor spaces are being planned on sites previously earmarked for commercial development. In Sheffield, the 1.5-acre Pound Park is to be created where a car park and offices were previously pencilled in. In Leeds, the proposed Aire Park – part of a wider development of apartments and hotels – will become the city’s biggest new green space since the Victorian age. In Manchester, readjusted plans to regenerate the old Mayfield railway depot will now see a 6.5-acre oasis at its heart, albeit one surrounded by high-rise towers.

It all raises an intriguing prospect: after decades when the prevailing trend has been one of loss, could we now be seeing the first signs of a new golden age of park building? And could such facilities be key to transforming the flagging fortunes of our urban centres?

The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) said the news would be a “sigh of relief” for rural tourism businesses.

CLA president Mark Bridgeman said: “Now that restrictions are being lifted, we are encouraging everyone to book their self-catering family holiday in the beauty and safety of the British landscape.

“There is nowhere better for a holiday than the great British countryside.”

Poultry farmer Susie MacMillan said on Facebook that she was “beyond happy” to be told she could reopen the farm’s campsite business in Ditchling, East Sussex, on 4 July.

Somerset farmers Michael and Jenny Churches were finalists in the diversification category for the 2019 Farmers Weekly Awards for their Glastonbury Wedding and Events venue.

Their beautiful, deconsecrated church in Godney last hosted an event on 18 March – five days before the country entered lockdown.

The ACS’ 2020 Rural Shop Report outlines the crucial role that rural shops play in people’s daily lives as job creators, service providers and social hubs.

The report shows that the UK’s 16,986 rural shops continue to provide around 146,000 local, flexible and secure jobs. Almost a third of colleagues say they rely on the flexibility to fit their job around childcare commitments or caring for other family members, while jobs in rural shops also offer the security of the guaranteed hours and pay that does not come with gig economy jobs.

People in rural areas rated their local convenience store as their number one most essential service, the report reveals, in addition to the service that overall has the most positive impact on their local area. Rural shop customers are also more dependent on these stores because the nearest alternative is further afield than in urban areas.

ACS chief executive, James Lowman, said: “The UK’s rural shops provide a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of people, not just through the provision of everyday essentials and a range of services, but also by providing secure local jobs in otherwise isolated communities. They do all of this despite facing an uphill battle to gain access to decent broadband speeds and reliable mobile connectivity, and if they have a cash machine on the premises, to keep that machine free to use for customers. If this Government is committed to levelling up the UK economy, it must include plans to level the playing field for our rural shops.”

North Yorkshire’s rural communities are full of economic potential but longstanding obstacles needed to be cleared to allow them to realise it, an independent commission has been told.

The North Yorkshire Rural Commission, set up specifically to look at the challenges facing North Yorkshire’s rural communities, has heard evidence from small businesses and large organisations on the county’s jobs and economy. 

The eight commissioners tasked with investigating key areas of concern in England’s largest county, 85 per cent of which is classed as rural or super sparse, heard that the big ticket items which would help unlock the rural economy included an overhaul of public transport, education linking learning to business start-up opportunities, significant investment in mobile and superfast broadband and devolution.

The first to give evidence was former farmer, Mark Pybus, who highlighted the issues around rural broadband. Mr Pybus started to diversify on his family farm near Catterick 15 years ago and is now the manager of Crabtree Hall Business Centre. 

The centre employs 32 people and offers serviced office space for small businesses alongside a café and a children’s nursery. 

But Mr Pybus said broadband has been an issue from early on.

“We opened the business centre in 2007 but by 2010 the broadband we had was not fit for purpose so we started looking for an alternative. We invested in and installed our own super-fast connection in 2012/13 and Crabtree Community Broadband (CCB) followed.”

Mr Pybus said this provided affordable superfast connectivity to businesses and villages, predominantly west of the A1, as far as Masham and Leyburn.

A new coalmine in Cumbria has been given the green light by the government in the same week that the Treasury launched a review into how the UK can end its contribution to global heating.

The developer, West Cumbria Mining, said the £165m mine would create 500 jobs.

The Cumbrian MP Tim Farron called the decision “a kick in the teeth in the fight to tackle climate change”.

Farron had asked the government to “call in” the decision after it received unanimous planning approval by Cumbria county council in March.

But his application has been rejected, with the local Conservative MP Trudy Harrison saying “sense has prevailed”.

Farron, the Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, expressed his dismay, saying the government should “invest fully in zero-carbon energy” instead.

He said: “Cumbria has so many renewable resources to provide energy – water, wind and solar – and we should most definitely not be taking the backwards step of opening a new coalmine.”

The news came as the government announced its net zero review, which will assess “how we can cut our emissions without seeing them exported elsewhere”.

The mine, called Woodhouse Colliery, will be situated on the former Marchon industrial site near Whitehaven. It will extract coking coal from under the sea nearby, with access via the existing Sandwith Anhydrite mine portals, according to West Cumbria Mining.

Could a multi-use space be what it takes to transform our struggling high streets?

According to statistics from the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium and Springboard, footfall on NI’s high streets was down by 5.5% last month, making it the worst region in the UK.

Some people in Bangor, County Down, think they may have found the answer.

The seaside town’s main shopping centre, the Flagship Centre, closed its doors earlier this year.

The premises is privately owned and is now in administration.

Louise Little, manager of North Down Community Network, believes a multi-use facility where community, voluntary, health, business, statutory and faith-based sectors can operate under the same roof could regenerate the community and create major footfall.

The director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium said the group is “thinking in a way that a lot of town centres need to”.

“We need to be having these conversations now because this seismic change is already underway,” Aodhán Connolly told BBC News NI.

The fashion chain Bonmarché has called in administrators, putting nearly 3,000 jobs at risk.

The Wakefield-based retailer, which sells fashion for women over 50 and has 318 shops, said it had got into difficulties after a “sustained period of challenging trading conditions and cashflow pressure”.

Administrators said they would continue to trade Bonmarché while assessing options for the future for the business. All stores remain open for the time being and no redundancies have been made.

Tony Wright, a joint administrator and partner at FRP Advisory who was appointed on Friday afternoon, said: “Bonmarché has been a staple on the UK high street for nearly three decades, but the persistent challenges facing retail have taken their toll and led to the administration.” He said he hoped to find a buyer for the business.

High street shops had their worst September for eight years thanks to Brexit uncertainty, new figures suggest, and one key sector saw purchases at their lowest since the 2008 recession.

Other factors contributing to an in-store sales fall of 3.1 per cent, compared with a year prior and after an already weak 2.7 per cent drop, included plummeting footfall and closures of big-name chains.

It was the poorest September since 2011, according to BDO’s High Street Sales Tracker.

Weaker discretionary spending resulted in the lifestyle category suffering a 5.4 per cent drop, its worst performance since the height of the recession in November 2008.

Free-to-use cash machines are vanishing more quickly in deprived areas than in affluent ones, new research shows.

Which? said its analysis shows nearly one in 10 free cashpoints across the country had closed or switched to fee-paying during a 17-month period after changes to how the network is funded were set out.

Reductions to the fees card issuers pay to ATM operators have sparked fears that “cash deserts” could be created, with bank branches also closing.

Looking just at the numbers of free ATMs which had been converted from free to fee-charging, Which? found that the most deprived areas across the UK had seen a reduction of 979 free-to-use machines – equivalent to 5.7 per cent of their ATM network.

Brexit uncertainty and a global economic slowdown amid the US-China trade war has set Britain on course for the most prolonged slump in business investment in 17 years, according to the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC).

Setting Britain on course for weaker economic growth in future, the lobby group said business spending in the UK was due to decline by 1.5% in 2019 and by 0.1% next year as companies put their investment plans on ice amid the global political turmoil.

Paving the way for the longest period of annual declines in business investment since the turn of the millennium – when the dotcom bubble burst to drag down investment around the world – the BCC said investment in the UK was due to fall for three years in a row.