England’s 1,600 market towns have been hard hit by the recession, with unemployment overall rising by a third more than in the nation as a whole. Shop vacancies have increased and empty shops are getting harder to let.

But towns are fighting back. Town Partnerships and Town Councils are working locally to bring renewed vitality to their town centres. Action for Market Towns is providing research, lobbying and helping to promote the sharing of good practice between towns.

This page has links to a number of resources, including case studies, all linked to the campaign theme of Prosperous Places.

NEW – AMT’s Towns-4-Towns Programme – helping towns to beat the recession.

Many small towns have suffered similar problems during the recession and can benefit by sharing solutions, experience and good practice. AMT’s Towns-4-Towns programme enables towns to share ideas and initiatives that have worked in their communities.

AMT’s member towns can share their recession-beating initiatives, or learn from others, in a number of ways:

• AMT’s Case Studies provide useful ideas and examples of good practice in market towns. There is a selection of projects below and many more are available to members in our database of good practice case studies.
• Organisations working in rural towns find it useful to share ideas and experience about what has worked well elsewhere. The online Prosperous Places Forum lets you share your ideas, ask advice of other towns that have already implemented similar projects and  provide information about initiatives that your town, or one you know of, has helped to tackle the recession. The forum can be accessed by clicking here.
• Once you have an idea about a project you would like to develop, why not learn more from those who have already done it. AMT’s Towns-4-Towns Exchange fund can help towns by contributing to the cost of learning and developing the project themselves, including feasibility work and business planning.
• If you are a local authority, rural forum, market town network or other organisation that works with rural towns why not bring your towns together at a networking event, to share experience and learn from each other. Let us work with you to devise a networking event tailored to the problems faced by the towns in your area or related to a relevant market town issue. We will develop the programme in close consultation with you, while drawing on AMT’s experience, resources and knowledge of transferable projects across the country. Through our Towns Alive programme we are in a position to subsidise such events by up to 50%. For examples of similar events we have organised in recent months see the networking events section of our website.

NEW Your Town as a Department Store

Think of your high street as a department store – and then think through what a department store needs to get right to attract you as a customer. That will give you a pointer to interventions you can make to improve the attractiveness and viability of your town centre.

Here are Action for Market Towns top ten tips for beating the recession on the High Street:

1. Get the basics right: Signage and car parking are important- if your customers can’t park or find their way around you will lose them. Our consultancy organisation amt-i  can help you with signage audits and car parking studies.
2. Organise events: Events are a good way to get people back in to your town – and not just at Christmas
3. Know your customers:  A Town Centre Services package from amt-i includes business training, mystery shopping and visitor surveys.
4. Encourage loyalty: Loyalty schemes are proven to boost business. amt-i can help in setting up a loyalty scheme for  your town.
5. Joint marketing: Link up with neighbouring towns to create a destination for visitors.
6. 6. How well are you doing?: We can lead you through an innovative online Town Benchmarking programme to review your town’s retail offering, number of vacant units, traditional markets and business confidence and compare it to neighbours and other similar towns across the country.
7. Learn from others: Our Towns-4-Towns scheme provides support for learning from the success of projects in other towns. Local networks of towns enable you to share good ideas – AMT has established one in collaboration with North Yorkshire County Council.
8. Check out case studies of good practice: The AMT website has an online library of nearly 200 case studies of successful projects in towns throughout the country to give members inspiration and knowhow.
9. 9. Find your way through the policy jungle: AMT members have access through our website to policy information as well as help in putting policy into practice.
10. Join Action for Market Towns: Our January Sale offers 15months for the price of 12 and opens up a whole range of services to your town. Click here for membership information.

NEW - AMT’s DRAFT POLICY POSITION STATEMENT

We have just published our draft Policy into Practice Statement on Prosperous Places – this sets out what we consider the key challenges to be in terms of economic issues affecting small towns.  You can access it by clicking here: Draft Prosperous Places  Position Statement

We would appreciate your feedback on this Position Statement so that we can finalise it in the New Year.  If you have any comments, please contact us at:Alison.Eardley@towns.org.uk

Alternatively, we have also established a web-forum for Prosperous Places, and you are most welcome to post your thoughts there to share and discuss with others. The web-forum can be accessed by clicking here.  Please note that you will require your login and password to access the online forums – if you do not have one, or have lost yours, then please email us at:Alison.Eardley@towns.org.uk.

Once the document is complete, we will be publishing our Campaign Plan for Prosperous Places which will will detail how we are addressing the challenges noted in the Policy Position Statement.

We are looking for feedback by Friday 8 January, at which point we will be finalising the paper and publishing on our website.

NEW – LOYALTY CARDS HELP BOOST THE HIGH STREET

In conjuction with the publication of our draft Policy Position Statement, we have also produced some information on those of you looking for ways to increase footfall into your high street and shops.  We explore the value of customer retention in an increasingly competitive market, and how some towns have started to to use loyalty cards as a way of persuading more shoppers to shop locally.  You can find the article by clicking here: Encouraging Shoppers to Spend in your High Street

Our other documents concerning Prosperous Places are listed below:

• Action for Market Towns/Centre for Local Economic Strategies research report into the effect of the recession on market towns. Click here to download
• Commission for Rural Communities report to DEFRA Secretary of State Hilary Benn on the effect of the recession on market towns. Click here to download
• A report for the Gloucestershire Market Towns Forum on the effect of the recession on Gloucestershire market towns. Click here to download
• ‘Prosperous Places: Making the Economy Work for Your Town’deals with how your town can develop a strategy for its economic development and boost the business community. Click here to download
• Action for Market Towns Position Statement & Background information. Retail and Town Centres. (February 2009) Click here to view
• Action for Market Towns -Retail and Town Centres. Position & Background. PPS6 for Dummies & Revisions in 2009 Click here to view
• CLG consultation paper on a new Planning Policy Statement 4: Planning for Prosperous Economies – Deadline for responses was 28 July 2009.  For AMT’s response please click here to download.

NEW – AMT-I RESEARCH AND CONSULTANCY HELP FOR HIGH STREETS

Action for Market Towns and the Commission for Rural Communities have recently campaigned for rural towns to have more prominence in the Department for Communities and Local Governments work to ‘Help High Streets’. As a ‘national voice’, AMT have been aware that for a number of years Market Towns have struggled to manage town centre activities with a lack of resources, declining footfall and an increasing number of vacant units. The recent CRC/AMT/CLES ‘Understanding and Supporting the Resilience of Market Towns’ report further illustrated how the recent economic downturn has sharpened these inherent problems.

Over the last two years AMT’s research arm, amt-i, has recognised the need for the provision of practical tools to help those working to revitalise and regenerate towns. A range of ‘Town Centre Services’ provided by amt-i benefit both individual towns and those with wider strategic involvement. One off Car Parking Studies, Signage Audits and Visitors Surveys offer innovative and objective reviews of some of the most important aspects associated with the High Street, whilst strategically, a suite of the ‘Town Centre Services’ can be deployed in a town or a region for holistic research. For more information on all the amt-i tools designed to help town centres please click here.

One of the most popular tools for both one off and holistic reviews is the innovative online Town Benchmarking system. Town Benchmarking provides towns with a framework and methodology to effectively collect pertinent data regarding their town centre at a minimum cost. Twelve Key Performance Indicators are measured including:

• Variety and range of shops
• Balance of Comparison and Convenience Retail Units
• The mix of multiple independent retailers
• Footfall
• Business Confidence
• Visitors opinions
• The provision of adequate and convenient car parking

Once collected and inputted, Town Benchmarking provides a unique analysis and picture of individual town centres. The data can be used as a one off, or longitudinally, so any changes or promotions in the town centre can be measured.

The real benefit of the system however, is that in the annual report generated for each town, the data on each of the twelve KPI’s is then compared and averaged against a national figure for all other ‘Benchmarking’ towns. The in depth data offers Market Towns a tangible insight into how their town centre is performing, what is working well and what can be improved. Allied to this, national figures can be built up year on year in terms of what aspects of town centres are changing. For example, in November 2009, the average percentage of vacant units in ‘Benchmarking’ towns was 10%, a 4% increase in the January 2009 figure.

The system is proving to be a success, and from 14 Market Towns in 2006, in 2009 50 towns from across the East Midlands, East of England, South West and West Midlands are registered. A number of existing ‘Benchmarking’ towns have successfully used the evidence to apply for external funding to improve their town centre, whilst with data collection reliant on local people, some localities have used the project to stimulate partnership activity.

If you think your town or cluster of towns would benefit from this unique online system, costing £200 a year for first time users, and £150 for each subsequent year, please contact Mike King (amt-i Senior Research Consultant) on 07818 068982 or e-mail mike.king@towns.org.uk

CASE STUDIES

Click on the case study titles below for examples of projects which represent good practice in market towns.

The Forum Cinema

The Forum Cinema, Hexham is a profit-making commercial cinema in the centre of the market town. What makes it unusual is that it is owned and operated by the Hexham Community Partnership and the profits contribute to the core costs of the partnership, which aims to act as a focus for the regeneration of Hexham for the benefit of its community.

The Welland Benchmarking Project

This project involved teams of volunteers in 14 towns working together to develop a benchmarking project to identify how each town was performing against 12 key performance indicators (KPIs).

Haslemere Rewards retail loyalty card

Haslemere Rewards is a loyalty card scheme supporting and promoting Haslemere’s and its villages’ unique mix of small independent businesses.

Skillbuilders Artisan Training Support

Skillbuilders is an innovative artisan skill promotion programme.

Caterham’s shop local campaign

Starting a Local Shopping and Trading Campaign. An initiative aimed at providing a range of measures to support the retailers of Caterham.

Stamford Gateway

Stamford Gateway is a project that has renovated two town centre squares to the highest quality as ‘Gateways’ to the town. The town partnership took the innovative step of running a national design competition to create sympathetic spaces with locally inspired artworks reflecting Stamford’s image as a traditional, historic market town.

Impact of an edge-of-town Tesco store

A study of the impact on town centre trade of locating a Tesco store on the edge of Beverley.

Inward Investment in Howden- a case study of good strategy

The Press Association relocated a large part of their operations to the market town of Howden. A £5 million state of the art complex houses some 500 staff members. Excellent communications and strategy between the Press Association and East Riding of Yorkshire Council have ensured that the inward investment maintained the vitality and viability of the town.

Car parking charges in Sleaford

A project to examine the effect of parking charges on town centre trade.

Wayland House – building the business

After the refurbishment of an old Police Station and its transformation into Wayland House, the staff and trustees spent the following year ‘building the business’, seeking ways to attract tenants, clients and visitors, and new funding streams to support the community.

Cambridge Area Differentiated Branding and Promotion

The Greater Cambridge Partnership is supporting the growth of the already strong high technology cluster that exists in and around Cambridge. Under the banner of the Cambridge brand, it is also identifying local specialisms, including encouraging the development of high value manufacturing campuses prototyping designs in the market towns of Haverhill, Huntingdon and St Neots.

Stourport Canal Basin Regeneration

British Waterways HLF Restoration Project of Stourport Canal basins and Stourport Forwards MTI programme are working in partnership in order to enhance the local infrastructure and environment and provide a townscape and canalside that may be enjoyed by locals and visitors alike.

Richmond Heritage Partnership Scheme

Redundant empty spaces, particularly ‘over the shop’ premises, are a common problem in market towns. Richmondshire Swale Valley Community Initiative (RSVCI) identified refurbished 20 redundant properties against a strong latent demand for office and work/live space.

Revitalising Chorley Markets

In many market towns, the market is declining. But the experience of Chorley shows how traders and the local council working in partnership can revitalize a local market.

Buy Local

‘Buy Local’ – promoting locally made products in the Warminster community area.

Snow in Hythe at Christmas

The run-up to Christmas ought to mean business is booming for shopkeepers, but in Hythe they found that footfall in the town on Saturdays in December had fallen dramatically. The local partnership came up with the idea of using snow machines to create a ‘blizzard’ on every Saturday afternoon in December.

The County Square Environmental Enhancement Scheme, Ulverston

The County Square Environmental Enhancement Scheme is a magnificent new town square built using natural local stone by local contractors. It is home to the life-size bronze statue of Laurel and Hardy unveiled by Ken Dodd on 19 April 2009 and which is now a major tourist attraction for Ulverston.