PAUL WILDSMITH’S new job began with a baptism of fire. Literally. A couple of days before he started as the new head officer of Darlington council, the shop which for more than a century had been his family’s grocery business burned down.

And then, a couple of days into the job, there was meltdown: House of Fraser announced it was to shut its landmark Binns store on High Row. With M&S going, BHS and Mothercare gone, the blaze of the retailers in the town centre immediately became his number one issue.

It was his family’s retailing background that encouraged Mr Wildsmith to study accountancy at Teesside Polytechnic, and then it was his mother’s eagle eyes, spotting a Durham County Council advert for a trainee accountant in The Northern Echo, that caused him to stumble into local government nearly 40 years ago.

“I’ve never regretted going into local government,” he says. “I’m working in my own town, able to make a difference – some people may think it is the wrong difference – but it is a real honour to try and help the people of Darlington.”

Now 59, after 20 years as Darlington’s chief financial officer, he has just taken over as the managing director of what is third smallest unitary authority in the country (only Hartlepool and Rutland are smaller than Darlington).

From 1867 to 1974, generations of Wildsmiths ran the store in Skinnergate which burned down on May 24. His father, Percy, was among the last generation of old-fashioned grocers which found itself overtaken by the new-fangled supermarkets and their self-service ways.

“The fire was very sad,” he says. “I have memories of my dad walking down the long backyard from the walk-in freezers with a whole side of bacon over his back. My favourite thing as a kid was the little bits that fell off as they sliced the ham. They were small, like sweets, really dry ham, and they’d sell them in little brown paperbags.”

In many ways, the eclipsing of Wildsmiths by Liptons, one of the first supermarkets which moved in next door, in the 1970s is being played out again in the 2010s as the old-fashioned retail giants, like Binns and M&S, find themselves overtaken by online shopping.

“The shape of town centres is changing,” he says. “The speed of it is catching everyone unaware, and now it’s a rolling snowball because shops thrive on other shops. If one goes another goes.”

Beyond the discussions with the companies and the property-owners, he sees the council’s role as lubricating the wheels of change.

“More and more local authorities are having to intervene,” he says. “Even though we have very little cash we can borrow on a commercial basis. I envisage we may have to buy properties to renovate and sell on or rent on; we may have to facilitate shops moving from one part of town to another because the town centre will change shape, it will shrink over the next 20 years.”

Restaurants, and gin bars, are already creeping along Grange Road and into Skinnergate, soaking up the space vacated by shops, and residential developments are taking over old offices – the former tax office in Commercial Street, the former education offices in Woodland Road, the former tyrefitters in Northumberland Street…

“There’s no reason why we couldn’t buy old buildings and convert them into social housing, or more likely, get into joint ventures with a partner, like a housing association,” he says. The former engine shed in Haughton Road, recently converted into mews-style accommodation by the Railway Housing Association, may be a model.

But this son of retailers doesn’t think that retailing is dead.

“The covered market is unique for Darlington,” he says. “That to me is the single thing if we can get right, get it full of vibrant independents, it can attract people into the town.”

He engineered the deal last May that handed control of the market to a specialist private company, Market Asset Management (MAM).

“The market is basically a big shopping centre and I didn’t think that us, as a local authority, were the right people to manage it, so I believe getting the private sector involved was the right thing to do. MAM have a vision for it and hopefully they’ll get it delivered.”

In fact, he strikes a surprisingly defiant note. “How many empty British Home Stores are there in the country?” he asks. “Well ours is getting filled. People says it’s B&M Bargains, but the demand is there, they’re coming and I’m pleased the building’s full.”

The new role

THE retirement of Ada Burns after 12 years as chief executive caused the council to restructure. It is now headed by three directors – Ian Williams, in charge of economic growth and services, and Suzanne Joyner, in charge of children and adults, are the others – with Mr Wildsmith retaining oversight of finances.

“We have deleted the chief exec’s role as part of the cost cutting exercise, putting £130,000-a-year back into the coffers,” he says. “There’s three of us sharing out the role, although one person has to be first among equals.”

Ms Burns had the misfortune to be in charge at a time of austerity and became associated with controversial cuts. Will the restructure mean that Mr Wildsmith doesn’t become so personally entwined?

“I am not the lead figure on the council,” he says. “The leader, Bill Dixon, is, along with his cabinet. They set the direction of the council. I am their lead advisor with statutory responsibilities.”

Yet, when the annual salary figures are released, Mr Wildsmith, on £145,000-a-year, will be the tallest poppy.

“I’ve applied for a number of jobs in my career and got them on my merits,” he says. “It’s not been gifted to me, I’ve worked bloody hard to get it, and I have to work hard on a daily basis.

“Are salaries at the right level is a debate, but our salaries have been assessed independently to recruit and retain. It is what it is. I have agreed to do a job at a salary and people will hate me for it or have a go, but it is the contract.

“At certain points in my career, I had opportunities to work for one of the big four accountancy firms and had I done that I can guarantee my salary would have been three or four times that level. I chose to stay in local government because I feel I can make a difference.”

He says that remaining in the public sector has made him more socially aware.

“When I returned to Darlington in 1999 from Stockton, I learned things about the town that I didn’t know: child exploitation, the level of poverty and the deprivation, the number of vulnerable people,” he says. “There are some big gaps in our community – life expectancy for males in two wards differs by 11 years.

“It has been difficult during the period of austerity to really target them, but now we can try to narrow the gaps.”

Two projects

MR WILDSMITH is most proud of his role in the restoration of Darlington’s Edwardian theatre, now called the Hippodrome. “When I inherited the project, it was a £6m project,” he says. “Then they put the finance director in charge and it was a £12m project, but I was very clear that if we were going to do it, there should be no messing about, that we’d do it properly for the next 50 years, and to do it for £6m wasn’t really worth it.”

The completed Hippodrome is now a gleaming beacon in the dark days of Darlington’s austerity. Now there may be room for Mr Wildsmith to work with the Tees Valley Combined Authority to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway.

“2025 is a priority, and feels to me like my next Hippodrome,” he says. “There is the excitement of doing something special up at North Road station, of reopening the line to Stockton for walking and cycling. It has the ability to really improve our attractiveness in tourism terms because we have something that is unique across the whole world and perhaps we haven’t shone as much of a light on it as we could have.

“But for one person’s enthusiasm about 2025 another will ask why are you spending on that and not keeping, say, Binns in town?”

Two controversies

YESTERDAY, the inquiry into the closure of the library concluded in Leeds.

“It’s no secret that I have been front and centre of working up the proposal and I believe the relocation is the right thing to do, particularly for the young people,” he says. “I know that’s not popular with some.

“If we move ahead, I hope we will find an appropriate and good use for the library.

“I don’t want to see the building empty. What community use looks like and how it is funded will be a challenge, but we will look after that building like it’s our own home.”

The second controversy is houses. The Local Plan predicts 10,000 will be built over the next 20 years, and although Mr Wildsmith points out that’s roughly what Darlington has added in the last 20 years, there are already controversies from Middleton St George to Hurworth, from Blackwell to Skerningham.

The plan, he says, will give the town greater control over where the development happens and ensure that infrastructure – schools and roads – can complement it.

But he says: “Growth is good. We have a disproportionate number of over 65s – 20,515 or 19.7% of our population - and that’s growing, so we need to people working to support them.

“Population drives good schools, it drives the town centre. If you don’t plan for growth, you plan to stand still, and standing still is going backwards.

“What I say to people is do you want to a failing town that has swathes of areas where nobody wants to live and derelict houses and roads you can drive on very easily, or do you want to have a little bit of congestion while having a thriving economy?”

But can he get Darlington to thrive when a wildfire is ripping through its retail heart?