Town Centre Developments

The Forest of Dean District Council and Forest Business Future (FBF) commissioned this large and recent project.  FBF is a public/private sector partnership formed to provide businesses with a voice in the district.

It was an 18-month project with the aim of developing a marketing strategy to attract new businesses and to help existing ones to prosper.

Key elements of this project were an assessment of the four market towns in the District, and a postal survey covering 2,000 businesses to identify the opportunities and the barriers to business development.  PHC provided the Council with a comprehensive report on options for regeneration in the District that focussed on developing the retail offer in the market towns to benefit both residents and visitors.

This was a three year project that aimed to increase the number of multiple retailers in the town centre, and to raise the profile of the town amongst senior decision makers / influencers in the UK property industry.  We worked with the Aldershot Regeneration Partnership comprising local authority officers, councillors, local business people from the SME sector and national companies.

We undertook an audit of the town’s strengths and weaknesses and identified chain retailers that could benefit from opening a branch in the town.  We then used a highly targeted ‘research-sales’ process based on face-to-face meetings with potential retailers to establish their precise needs and to present the benefits of locating in Aldershot. To

After the three year project, our ‘Aldershot: On the Map, On the March’ campaign, has contributed to significant changes within the town, attracting new multiple retailers into the town – shop vacancies were halved and major new developments launched.

In a report in The Guardian newspaper on Monday 10 December 2007 the headline stated "Aldershot sheds pubs and paras image to lead the rise of the mini-city."

Tourism South East - the regional tourism authority, together with the Countryside Agency, had developed practical guidance to help market towns identify their own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as the basis for preparing a tourism vision and action plan. We analysed existing research and facilitated over 20 workshops for different towns as well as representing Tourism South East by presenting at a national conference.

In addition we developed the Mystery Visitor Experience Checklist for Tourism South East.  It provides an objective assessment of a town’s features from a visitor’s perspective and the process enables a snapshot at a point in time covering transport links, shopping and other necessary facilities such as toilets, cash machines and welcome by shop staff.  A database was developed to enable towns to compare their scores across all criteria with others in the survey.

The Buckinghamshire town of Chalfont St. Peter asked PHC to develop a marketing plan to increase the vibrancy of the shops.  Following a face-to-face survey of business needs, street interviews, a review of competing locations, and coupled with an extensive postal survey, a practical marketing plan was presented and adopted by the retailers.