The post you are reporting:
The Town Council is essentially a parish council, so sadly has limited powers, but hopefully makes up for that in influence, the District Council has all the statutory powers (planning, environment, community safety etc.) that should be brought to bear on improving the street scene etc in the town centre. The Chamber of Commerce should ideally be the co-ordinating body for businesses (retailers, offices and most importantly landlords) in the town centre, unfortunately it has failed to attract many members in the retail sector etc and as such has minimal influence.
There are a number of things that need to be done to get any serious regeneration of town centres moving
1. Establishing and understanding what strengths there are to build on
2. Recognising and prioritising the weaknesses
3. Establishing a vision for the future that all stakeholders buy in to
4. Producing a master plan that covers how to promote the existing strengths,action plans and deadlines for dealing with the weaknesses, identifying relevant organisations to carry them out etc.
The challenges are many, not least getting all parties around a table, getting landlords to understand and agree that reducing rents is likely to create longer revenue streams, getting business/commerce/councils to fund a team to organise and run the town centre and manage the regeneration plan, getting the councils to delegate adequate and appropriate powers etc.
Sadly for Dover at the moment there is too much politics going on and too many vested interests