One of our Vice Chairmen, John Puddy has been attending an ASB Steering Group involving the Police and TDC’s Environmental Health team, as well as Councillors. This has been useful in knowledge sharing and looking at ways to help with some of the problems those of you in the Town Centre have been experiencing.
You will see on our website and Facebook page that TDC has produced a document about drinking in public spaces. This is to try to tackle the street-drinking, anti-social behaviour and public urination (yes people do still do this!) in the Town Centre. The Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) document has a link to the proposed order and maps – and is your opportunity to HAVE YOUR SAY! So please do visit the page and add your comments.
In a recent survey we conducted, and that you very kindly responded to, we had a very satisfactory return and we are delighted that 68% of your responses felt that their membership was value for money – it’s great to know we are getting something right, especially as we cannot meet up currently. What was revealed in the survey was the need for:
- Face to face meetings
- promotion/marketing
- shop local campaign
Now that the Covid19 Roadmap is rolled out, we can cautiously start to make plans for the forthcoming months, and we are delighted that we are going to organise a proper face to face social evening, later in the summer (scientific data permitting) where we can all meet up, no formalities but instead a chance to meet each other over a glass a wine – and the Chamber will supply the wine – this social will be to launch Chamber’s future programme of networking events, business clinics and more. So keep an eye out for that.
In the meantime, we are still under restrictions and we put our heads together to try and find a way to help with promotion and marketing. Virtual meetings are no good, just about everyone is Zoomed out now – we know that all the members on the Executive are. So we thought, how about you send us a short 3-minute video of how you have coped and what you are looking forward to, maybe give some tips on how you have adapted and how it has worked in with the usual running of your business. We have had a few members interested and hope to get these clips uploaded onto the website. This will of course promote your business in the best way – by you!
We would also ask any of you if you produce a newsletter for your clients or staff that you think would be suitable to post onto the Chamber website that is another great way to promote your business. We have had a massive take up with our Facebook page and it has certainly come into its own during this period of lockdown.
We look forward to April 12th, let us hope that the spread of infection across the country stays low in order to get back to some kind of normality. If you have anything you wish to raise with the Executive, do please get in touch via the website, the Chamber Facebook page or email us.
