DARTMOUTH is a sad town at the moment, according to Cllr Tessa de Galleani.

And something needs to be done to ‘stop the rot’ of rising business rents, she told this month’s Dartmouth Town Council.

Cllr de Galleani asked the council to take a special look at the financial state of the town.

But Paul Reach, chairman of the Dartmouth Business Forum, said it was not all negatives but a matter of looking at the positives in the town and creating the right balance.

Cllr David Gent said ever since he had lived in Dartmouth people had been telling him the town was dying.

And he would like to hear more about what the Business Improvement District was up do, as there had been little contact since the death of Roger Chilcott.

Cllr de Galleani, who is now the council’s representative on the BID board, said there had been nothing to report as there had been no meetings.

Cllr Robin Springett said a lot was going on in Dartmouth but it wasn’t easy to know what was bringing visitors to the town, as the business model of some 20 years ago had now gone.

Cllr Les Barnes said it was up to the BID to be attracting new businesses to the town, not the town council.

Cllr Tony Fyson said the town was getting more chintzy shops and agreed the town council was there to ‘serve residents first’.

‘These assumptions that we are just a tourist town are way off the mark,’ he said.

‘People living here spend a lot of money all year.’

Cllr Richard Rendle said he believed Dartmouth had changed for a lot of reasons beyond its control.

Rents on businesses owned by the Dartmouth Trust had been raised at the risk of spoiling what was once a lovely and vibrant market town, he said.

‘It is not true that they (the trust) were instructed to do it, they voted to do it and it has had an effect,’ he said.

Cllr Rendle said the town had got scruffy - with banners on the Embankment and posters and tat on pavements - and had been bullied by people.

It was time to put the soul back into Dartmouth to raise standards and take pride in the town, he said.