PLANS to give Tyldesley town centre a complete overhaul have taken a giant leap forward after they received overwhelming approval by the Community Economic Development (CED) Foundation in London.

The Tyldesley Town Partnership (TTP) was chosen by the government as one of 50 community groups from across the country to come up with ideas to strengthen their community and economy.

The partnership's application to upgrade the appearance of the town centre, boost businesses and attract more visitors was ranked as one of the best submitted by CED Foundation and will now proceed to the next stage.

Paula Wakefield, chairman of the partnership, said: "It’s really heartening to know that we have such support for Tyldesley’s future.

"Tyldesley’s application scored highly across a number of criteria. The CED Foundation was really impressed with the level of detail in the plan and with the number of people who attended the open evening that was held to explain the proposals."

The application outlined four main areas for action – upgrading the appearance of the town centre to make it more appealing to visitors and businesses, taking community control of key assets such as the Market Square and using the space for community groups and events, linking local school leavers and unemployed people with job opportunities and developing a business enterprise package to encourage investment in the town centre.

But although the application was given a big thumbs up, a lot of work still needs to be done before the plans become a reality.

Paula added: ‘The CED Foundation has highlighted that we still have some work to do regarding addressing the needs of the area, the practicalities of implementation and the measurement of the social impact of the plan.

"We also know from the open evening that people want assurances that any co-operatives formed will be fully transparent and that membership will be open to our local population."

The government will be issuing additional opportunities for investment through the CED programme following this week's local elections.

"Once these are identified we will be drawing up an action plan," Paula said.

"It will respond to the issues raised by the CED Foundation and the feedback from our open evening, and outline how we will secure funding.

‘We’ll then be working with local businesses to add their views on how we develop the proposals, and we’ll be asking for groups and individuals interested in setting up and running the organisation that will be responsible for the acquisition and management of asset transfers to meet with us.

"Throughout the process we’ll keep people updated via our Tyldesley Town Partnership Facebook page."