Reader letter: 'We need to move away from retail and towards city centre living'

Dear Sir,

I can only agree with the comments about Wakefield city centre made in The Express last week.

The coronavirus together with the rise of online shopping is only going to increase the number of empty shops, so perhaps now is the time for a more wide-ranging focus away from retail towards city centre living.

Combine this with a more coherent policy for reducing through traffic (surely Wood Street with its historic buildings would be a more appropriate street to pedestrianise or why not restrict the bottom of Westgate to buses only) could help create a more vibrant city centre and encourage new enterprises to open.

Wakefield is not alone in facing these difficulties, but in a digital world surely now is the time to do something different. Unless the council can show some vision the decline of the city centre will only accelerate.

Bryn Probert

Horbury