Slough town centre was branded a ‘disgrace’ by a candidate vying to become the next MP in a debate in Queensmere Shopping Centre.

General election candidates argued over how to revitalise the town centre in a hustings hosted by Asian Star Radio on Tuesday, June 18.

Independent candidate Diana Coad said the priority should be to ‘clean up our streets’ to attract businesses to the town.

She said: “If you come here, if you’re going to look to buy a house and you see dirty streets, rubbish everywhere, homeless people, you see graffiti everywhere, do you want to go and buy a house in that town? Do you want to open a business there? No you don’t.

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“Clean up our streets first. The first thing the Conservatives should have done when they took over as a council is clean up our streets. Slough town centre is a disgrace, it’s like a third world country.”

Many of the candidates said breathing new life into the town would be their first priority if they were elected MP.

Azhar Chohan of the Independent Network said Slough High Street is ‘a big white elephant.’ He said the Labour and Conservative parties ‘both at parliamentary level and local council level failed to attract the investment'.

Slough’s most recent MP, Labour’s Tan Dhesi, said he could attract investment by working with a Labour government. He criticised the Conservatives who have run Slough Borough Council since taking it over for the first time in May 2023.

Mr Dhesi said: “It is the responsibility of the council to be liaising with the developers, to get the planning permission in, to get that approved, to get that high street redeveloped.

“Unfortunately they have been unable to do that and it’s come to such a state that the owners of those shopping centres have actually decided that they’re not proceeding with their developments.”

He added: “That is why we need a Labour government working with a Labour MP to ensure we get that investment into our town, that we get the high street rejuvenated.”

Conservative candidate Moni Nanda said the town needed ‘a relief programme’ She also said she had run a business in the Middle East.

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She said people in the Middle East ‘will not do business with you if they do not trust you'. It was an apparent reference to a stalled project to redevelop Slough’s Queensmere and Observatory shopping centres by the Abu Dhabi Investment Agency.

An audience member asked if candidates would reform business rates. Liberal Democrat candidate Chelsea Whyte said her party wants to cut business rates, and reform the system so that rates are paid by landowners rather than local shops and small business owners.

Green candidate Julian Edmonds said the Greens would hand the power to set business rates back to councils rather than the government.

Mr Chohan also said business rates need to be cut, and Mr Dhesi said the Labour Party had been calling for business rates to be reformed.