St Austell Chamber takes the initiative with an independent Town Centre Business Survey
At last week’s Chamber meeting, a new Business Survey for the Town Centre was revealed to members and invitees, including county and town councillors, who attended.
The need for a Business Survey of the Town Centre is crucial. Currently, the actual trading state of the town is broad guesswork based on looking at generalised national or county statistics. County Councillors are expected to make very important planning decisions that will affect the long-term future. It’s extremely difficult to make informed decisions based on what is non-current data.
“However, we’ve a ‘cash-strapped’ County Council, so if we sit and wait for an updated audit of St. Austell’s town centre shops and businesses to be commissioned, we could be waiting forever,” says Jessica Milln, Secretary to the St. Austell Chamber of Commerce.
“It didn’t happen overnight,” Ms Milln explains, “We spent a lot of time thinking about what were the most important questions and asking for critical opinion before the final version. This is really important because if businesses are going to take the time to fill out a survey, the results have to be able to deliver a really insightful report at the end. From which we expect to be able to make very real recommendations.”
The survey, for which Peter Moody at St. Austell Printing Company kindly donated the printing, aims to give a precise trading picture of the town. To pin point why, and where in, St. Austell Town Centre trade and business may be struggling to compete in the current market and to make informed recommendations for future action.
By asking businesses about competition and where they see the threats to their business coming from, it gives us an informed starting point from which to make recommendations as how those threats can be mitigated. To help, not just the town to move forward, but also the whole area that depends on the town.
The biggest threat to St. Austell’s town centre traders has been cited as anything from a lack of loyalty from local customers right through recession and threat from out of town supermarkets, retailers and online sales. It’s no wonder that traders feel there is little they can do to change this. “However, the survey asks about access to training, business mentoring and support”, adds Ms Milln, “Enabling small changes in customer service and effective marketing can make surprisingly significant differences”.
The survey will be a starting point that goes alongside following the recommendations for future town centres made in the Beyond Retail Report. It is likely that Truro will continue to grow as the retail centre for the region and towns across the county, not just St. Austell will find it’s retail squeezed. The report says that St. Austell faces a stark future if it doesn’t pull together, show strong leadership, and face its challenges.
“As a Chamber,” says the Chairman, Dave Halton, “we’re also making our own study of parking charges in St. Austell in comparison to other towns across Cornwall.” Beyond Retail clearly says that parking charges is an area for review. If the charges are too high they deter shoppers from using the town centre and there’s a direct correlation between location, cost and usage. “If we can present to the council a proposal for sensible charges that we have evidence to show that both residents and businesses believe is attractive, we can make a very good case for the need for review. If lower charges encourage more people to use the town more frequently, the revenue for the Council is also likely to increase overall.”
Regeneration cannot be dependant only on developing new retail units especially if retailers are not currently interested in our town. Or creating alternative functions for empty units as social and employment spaces. It has to also include developing a USP or ‘unique selling point’ for the town. If the town is able to develop a specialist identity, as one idea muted, as a ‘Clark’s Village’ model specialising in designer outlet shops. It has a much better chance of becoming a magnet for shoppers and new businesses from a much wider area.
The Chamber is also developing a working party towards working up a ‘Town Prospectus’ to market St. Austell and would like to invite people who are interested and can contribute to contact us via secretary@staustellchamber.co.uk
It is hoped that all businesses will be more than willing to take part in the survey, as a report written from the results, will be aimed at making informed recommendations for future action to Councillors, Business Leaders, Developers and Investors.
