THE leader of Lichfield District Council says he stands by efforts to create a bright future for the city centre in the wake of the failed Friarsgate scheme. “I took the decisions to break the site up into smaller component parts to get things moving, to put a design code in place to ensure anything built would take an architectural form which we as residents could be proud of, to drastically reduce the proposed retail units – which would have killed the rest of the city – and to encourage the private sector to develop the site rather than the council trying again and again and failing.