Suddenly market towns like Malton have found a new spur, a new voice, and...new money. RON GODFREY meets the man whose organisation owns most of the town.

MALTON arise! Surely that's a too-familiar rally cry repeatedly uttered by those trying to lure businesses to the place? Usually its conviction has been matched by desperation.

Perhaps, but now, with market towns - and especially Malton - high on the agenda for regeneration by Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency, Roddy Bushell's call for re-locators to shun the big commercial honeypots like York and Leeds as well as out-of-town business parks and come to his neck of North Yorkshire is totally credible.

Of course the dapper Mr Bushell, has a big interest in succeeding in his quest. He is the manager of Fitzwilliam Estates which virtually owns Malton to the extent of much of the town centre and about 2,000 acres surrounding it.

But amazingly, for the first time in years, a town which some perceive as having been addled by administrative divisions between Malton Town Council, Norton Town Council and Ryedale District Council, at last seems to be speaking with one voice - and acting on it too. Gone, also, seems to be the public inertia of "Leave our community alone..."

A town centre manager - surveyor Malcolm Scott - has been appointed experimentally for the first time. Plans to co-ordinate car parking and the marketing of the town have been drawn up. Increasingly big audiences of residents have converged on public meetings to decide how best to spend Yorkshire Forward's £340,000 windfall for Malton. Traders have signed up to a marque defining standards. Shops are contributing towards a general marketing plan.

So Mr Bushell, who says his role in all this has been as a 'catalyst' should be heeded when he says: "The hearts and minds of the townsfolk have been won. Now we need to win the hearts and minds of businesses. If they come to us now we will be ready. We can compete.

"We want to reverse the tendency for businesses to ignore town centres and head for business parks. We want to nail the lie that market towns are lovely and quaint, but out of date and not fit for modern business."

That image, he says, is so unfair, given the serious disadvantages of business parks to which employees are forced to drive and often have no facilities to hand like pubs, restaurants, post offices, print shops or solicitors.

Unfair because comfortable buildings could be offered with high tech data cabling.

Unfair because as the biggest landowner in Malton, tenants could be offered the kind of flexibility for expansion which elsewhere might prove impossible.

Office seekers in Malton often declared a preference for ground floor accommodation with spaces for 50 cars outside the window. But Mr Bushell says: "If that is their mind set then I can't help them, but if they are looking for premises with character that work to which half the staff might be prepared to walk, and with car parking relatively close, then we can help."

Mr Bushell will not be drawn on the difficulties others claim he experienced getting agreement for public expenditure when he first mooted the idea of a town centre manager.

But he seems clearly relieved that the market towns initiative drawn up jointly between Yorkshire Forward and the Countryside Agency being implemented in six locations in Yorkshire is designed to ensure that the £340,000 allocated to each by-passes local government and goes directly to the townsfolk.

Instead he is keen to quote examples of how Fitzwilliam Estates can use its massive ownership to offer greater flexibility when it comes to catering for business' needs - such as the York-based Primary Care Group, an association of local doctors' practices serving Ryedale which decided to move to Malton.

It occupied a former solicitor's office in Yorkersgate, Malton, which had four of its own parking spaces with public parking behind.

The Victorian building, which accommodated ten people, was completely revamped by Fitzwilliam Estates to the tune of £130,000, including provision of data cabling, new loos for disabled people and a new kitchen. A local authority grant was bestowed of £15,000 under the Heritage Economic Regeneration Scheme which helps owners repair and re-organise heritage buildings for business use.

But there was a need for more space. "No problem," says Mr Bushell. "We own the chemist shop next door, which includes two floors with a flat above. So we are negotiating a surrender on the lease there in order that the Primary Care Group can extend its 2,300 sq ft by around 900 sq ft."

And there is no shortage of office space. Even now the estates company is marketing York House, built in 1684 to celebrate the marriage of Sir William Strickland and Elizabeth Palmes. The splendid Jacobean building has eight offices on two floors set behind magnificent iron gates and railings, with a garden backing on to the River Derwent.

Mr Bushell is bracing himself for the expenditure of another massive revamp to suit requirements of a tenant. Depending on the standard of fit required, rent would be in the region of £25,000.

Meanwhile Mr Bushell is convinced that when the town centre experiment is over in the next two months, the post will continue.

"It might cost around £30,000 a year, but within the market towns initiative there are now the resources to do it," he says.