Heritage town
One of our priorities through the Dewsbury Blueprint is not just breathing new life into the town centre but also future-proofing its heritage. Dewsbury's rich history and many beautiful historic buildings feature heavily in our plans, and we want to celebrate Listed structures like the market, arcade and town hall as key features in the town centre for many years to come.
The Dewsbury Revival Grant Scheme is providing local businesses with funding to improve the appearance of heritage buildings they're currently occupying, on key streets throughout the town centre - a great value way for us to support visual improvements to the town centre's heritage as a whole, while also supporting local businesses.
Through the Dewsbury Revival Grant Scheme, many local shopfronts have been made more attractive and in keeping with their historic surroundings. We've also supported improvements to upper floors of many buildings, which have opened them up for other uses.
As well as helping existing businesses attract more customers, we want to continue to find more ways to encourage more new businesses into the town centre.
This is a six-year programme which began in 2020 and will end in 2026.
Helping to kick off the blueprint, we worked in partnership with Historic England to deliver a Heritage Action Zone for Dewsbury.
This scheme ran for five years between 2018 and 2023, and has contributed to work already undertaken on various properties in and around Daisy Hill and the rest of the town centre.
The Heritage Action Zone's aim has been to help use Dewsbury's history as a catalyst to boost the local economy - work we intend to continue throughout our ongoing blueprint projects.
