UPDATE 1 February: 🏛️ The Chippenham Town Centre Partnership Board met for the first time this year last month - we put the finishing touches to our survey, which we will be saying more about really soon, so watch this space!
💬 The Board, which I founded and chair, brings together civic, community and commercial stakeholders to help boost Chippenham's economy, enhance the environment, and celebrate the town's heritage.
🏡 We are engaging with the community over the development of a new and comprehensive Town Centre Masterplan for Chippenham, which you will all have a chance to have your say on.
🚀 This Masterplan will then give us the best chance of securing funding when bidding for pots of local and national investment, to make the changes to the town centre you want to see. Looking forward to updating you all further on our plans in the coming weeks!
UPDATE July 2022: 📈🛍 Busy day Friday kicked off by Chairing the Chippenham Town Centre Board which I created.
👉🏻 I wanted to bring all the key stakeholder round the table to actually commit to investing in our town and working together to make it happen!
👉🏻 The ultimate goal is to drive footfall on the High St - helping the current local businesses and jobs plus creating new and in turn expanding the breadth of offer on our High St.
👉🏻 Heard all this before? Too right - we have all heard such wonderful ideas over the years and they have stayed just that - ideas. That’s why I am determined to make it happen, and ensure we work as a team to deliver.
👉🏻 Next step is to get a questionnaire out to Chippenham residents to ask what you think of the ideas on the table and what you want to see change and invested in. You have to decide Chippenham’s future not the people on my board but we need them to make it actually happen.
👉🏻 The Board includes representatives from Wiltshire Council, Chippenham Town Council, the owners of Borough Parade Shopping Centre, the owners of Emery Gate Shopping Centre, Chippenham Borough Lands Charity, the Chippenham Community Town Team Sandie Webb, the owner of Wilkinson’s building and Chippenham Chamber of Commerce.
👉🏻 We will then be in a better position to succeed when bidding in for government funding and other funding opportunities plus getting private investment.
👉🏻 My personal favourite idea (only one of loads discussed) which I really want to see happen if local people want it to - is utilising the river more because it’s an amazing feature of our town - not many towns have a river and park right off the High St. this isn’t a new idea - it’s been floating around for ages and was in the Chippenham 2020 work but I want to turn ideas into action!
At the moment Emery Gate has its back to the river but we could make this area a real feature. For example it would be a great place for restaurants to look out onto the river and draw in people into our town helping the local High Street and in turn ensuring we end up with no empty shops.