They have gone bust and stolen my money, I paid a years membership upfront, the cancelled my…read moremembership after 5 months and are refusing to repay the balance

Kettering town centre has recently become quite run down compared to what it used to be, although I…read morethink with the credit crunch and the closure of more and more shops, this is becoming true of a lot of town centres. Every day another shop seems to close. Over the last month I have noticed Woolworths, Birthdays, the card shop in the high street and the photo processing shop all closed down. There are at least 4 or 5 shops in the middle of the town centre all next to each other which are empty and this is making the whole town look drab and depressing. I don't really think it looks very clean either and there are always loads of dirty pigeons all over the place, although I'm not sure there is much you can do about that. The Newlands centre is quite small, but offers a good range of shops, and I like the fact that the market is situated on the street on a Friday, it makes it much more accessible for people passing through and they are more likely to spend money on the market rather than if it was situated on the market square out of the way. If you need essential items and you live fairly close, then Kettering is a good place to go as there are still quite a good range of shops, but if you are looking to do some serious shopping, then I would head for Northampton which offers much more.

Kettering town center is terrible; it seems to have lost all of its soul, as more and more shops…read moreclose down. There is now but a handful of quality shops left to choose from among the empty shop fronts. In all fairness the town is trying to regenerate its town center but as more and more shops close will it be more like a ghost town (centre) before long?! The odd one way system around the center and the lack of decent parking makes it complicated to non locals to get parked and get to the shops. The town center also looks really shabby and grubby with lots of litter and boarded up buildings.