Walton-on-Thames seems to be built on contradiction. This is prime Surrey commuterland, where trains whisk you up to Waterloo in 30 minutes and professionals live in large detached mock-Tudor homes with BMWs parked in gravel driveways.

Research into the demographics labels more than a third of the population as ABs, which is 60 per cent above the national average. Here, there are more high-spending 25 to 44-year-olds than in average towns and shoppers spend almost £4,000 a year on goods other than food. That is 50 per cent more than the average punter.

So far so fabulous, except that the good people of Walton need to drive to Esher to part with their cash if they want something more than bog standard. To say that Walton town centre is a disappointment is an understatement. It is simply incongruous with its surroundings. The shops lining the high street are a beleaguered mix of charity offerings, small independents and workaday chains, some of which look in dire need of refurbishment.

The Heart will change all that. Smack in the middle of town is a new development of 279 flats, 42 new shops, ten restaurants and cafés, a public library and a fitness centre. The £120 million scheme is one of the largest of its type currently springing up from the ground. Next and New Look have already signed up. More of the usual high-street suspects are expected to set up shop towards the end of this year. The first phase of one-bedroom (from £180,000) and two-bedroom (£275,000) flats will go on sale in September. The rest of the flats, including five three-bedroom penthouses (price not yet decided), will be up for grabs throughout 2007. The developer, O&H Properties, is aiming to have the project wrapped up by the end of next year.

Local people say that the redevelopment of their town centre is long overdue, and planning permission for this sort of scheme was granted by the local council to a different developer years before O&H brought in its cranes. So why did it all take so long? Mixed-use development, to use industry jargon, is all the rage these days. The Government wants it, local councils are calling for it, landowners make more money out of it and communities need it. But pulling it off is far from straightforward. O&H is one of the few developers that own, build and fund their own schemes. In matters of The Heart, the chain of command is clear and building work is in fact ahead of schedule.

Other regeneration projects may not work so smoothly for several reasons, not least because housebuilders are not necessarily experts in retail and the planning system is so complex. The big guns such as Barratt, Bellway, Wimpey and Persimmon, which are all involved in big strategic developments, usually work in partnership with commercial specialists such as The Mall Corporation, Thornfield, and Dawnay Day. The link-up provides commercial knowhow and, crucially, some funding.

Bringing in more players, however, makes for a more complex and potentially slower game. And then there is planning. With big mixed-use projects, such as a town centre scheme, the detailed planning is so overwhelming that it can reasonably be sought only in a series of several smaller, manageable applications. Anyone who might conceivably be affected has to be asked. Planning applications that would have taken eight weeks to deal with 20 years ago can now drag on for a year and a half.

Unfortunately, painstaking consultation does not guarantee that a scheme will work. Planners are arbiters of taste and not of commercial success. Put in too many shops or the wrong type of shops too soon and, like Cumbernauld in Scotland, today’s visionary scheme is more likely to become a future contender for Kevin McCloud’s Demolition than a civic treasure. As Yolande Barnes, a director of research at Savills, explains: “Boarded-up shops look worse than no shops at all and a failing commercial site can really devalue an area.”

So how do you get the mix in mixed-use right? The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) offers a neat solution. In Heritage Works, a report published yesterday, RICS concludes that regeneration schemes can work best if they centre on an historic building. The study argues that redeveloping period property pays in the long run, even though the initial costs are high and the planning restrictions fiendish. Focusing on an historic building gives the public a sense of place. Without a landmark, schemes can be soulless.

In Walton, there are no palatial period sites to be redeveloped. The Heart replaces a 1960s concrete carbuncle inconsistent with its surroundings. Barnes says that developers should learn from existing places that took 200 to 300 years to evolve, even if they are creating modernist schemes. The past tells us that all towns need a heart. Sometimes you just have to build a new one.

www.theheartofwalton.com, 01932 243804

susan.emmett@thetimes.co.uk

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