Town Centre Health Checks

What you told us

As part of the Town Centre Health Checks, respondents were invited to rate and provide comments on several aspects of their town centres. The questions centered around the themes that are part of the Place Standard Tool framework.

The surveys are conducted every two years and this year the Town Centre Health Checks were conducted for the following towns: Banchory; Banff; Ellon, Fraserburgh; Huntly; Inverurie; Peterhead; Stonehaven; and Turriff.

The survey was published online in September 2025 for a period of six weeks and received a total of 644 responses. Across all town centres, the common themes which emerged from the surveys were:

• Opportunities to enhance care and maintenance in the town centres;
• Potential to improve parking affordability and availability;
• Number of vacant units and seek more of variety of shops;
• Improve visitor experience in the town centres and feeling of safety.

What we’re doing

The results from the survey will be incorporated into the published Storymap reports for each town centre and benchmarked against previous years’ surveys and will form part of the Town Centre Health Check annual review in 2026, and future years.

The reports are anticipated to be published early 2026.

The survey results will also be shared with relevant Council Services for action, where appropriate, and will be used to feed into various Council Plans regarding Place.

You can view the original project here: Town Centre Health Checks | Engage Aberdeenshire