A councillor in Douglas says work is desperately needed to improve the look of the town.

Regeneration work is currently being carried out on the promenade and there are a number of sites which remain vacant.

Andrew Bentley, who represents Derby Ward, believes there is unanimous support to transform the capital.

Last year, councillors criticised temporary car parks on brownfield sites in Douglas. Council leader David Christian said they were ’dragging the town down and stopping investment’ and looked like ’bomb sites’. Mr Bentley says there is a ’general feeling amongst the people in Douglas that the town doesn’t look good enough.’

The Green Party member continued: ’You only have to look at the Middlemarch site, Walpole Avenue, the bus station site, the former Steam Packet warehouses, and along Circular Road - we need to get these [vacant] sites developed. I don’t think there’s any councillor that disagrees with that and [the Council of Ministers] has already approved that policy.

’We need to get these sites developed to have a capital that we can be proud of.’ Mr Bentley was asked what sort of impression of Douglas he thinks that last year’s airbridge visitors from Guernsey would have taken home.

He said: ’I mean it was bad timing for anybody who stayed on the promenade, and hopefully at the end of this we’ll have a much better looking promenade.

’But it still doesn’t take away from the fact that half the Villiers Hotel site isn’t demolished, that the former Imperial Hotel has been demolished. We need to get these sites developed, and housing is probably the most viable.’