Alsager Neighbourhood Plan

Report of the Town Centre Working Group

2 October 2017

Activities undertaken since the last report (4 September 2017)

WEAVE digital and creative network meeting

Held on 7 September at Macclesfield Town Hall, attended by four SG members (SA, CP, RW, HR) and Alex Hough from TCWG. Organised by Cheshire East's WEAVE team, its purpose was to bring together people interested in the digital and creative economy, as part of looking at how to regenerate towns. The keynote speaker was Wayne Hemmingway who emphasised the importance of supporting young people and giving them opportunities so that exciting things will happen.

A report of the meeting has been circulated separately.

Discussions

Date / Who / Discussions
26/9/2017 / Janey Moran and Dr Marieke Navin
Cheshire East Cultural Economy team / This was a follow-up meeting to the WEAVE networking event. We spoke about Alsager's aims for regeneration using the digital and creative economy and JM and MN discussed various examples and initiatives around Cheshire East. We focused on skills development and capacity building, targeting young people, and creating and managing sustainable maker space.

Proposed approach to Alsager School

The Town Centre WG believes that we are now in a position to initiate discussions with Alsager School over a number of matters related to involving young people in Alsager ambitions. There are two principal areas that we would like to raise:

·  how to involve the school in both developing an appropriate questionnaire for younger people, and then encouraging students to complete the questionnaire

·  what activities the school does, or could do, to encourage students to engage with digital and creative activities, to grow the next generation of creative entrepreneurs (which might include coding clubs eg using BBC microbits, encourage participation in Arts Award qualification and Duke of Edinburgh Award eg volunteering to train others in coding, programme of visits to maker spaces, etc)

If the Steering Group agrees, SA and CP will approach the school (first via Alison Pole, Head of Sixth Form) to start discussions.

Proposal to Alsager Town Council concerning use of Council Offices

In July we made a proposal to ATC that they try to take over the Council Offices from Cheshire East, move officers to top floor and open up the ground floor to public open access for arts related activities. A partnership could be created between the Council and Alsager arts organisations to enable them to apply for arts grants. On 26 September this was an agenda item at the ATC planning meeting where they agreed to refer it to the negotiating group of the Corporate Strategy Group which looks at all possible assets which the town council might acquire from Cheshire East. This would enable a full assessment of the issues and opportunities to be made.

Town Centre Working Group

A meeting was held on 11 September 2017.

Businesses

·  A wide ranging discussion about changes taking place in the town centre and potential opportunities opening up

·  We want to engage more with local landlords to see where there might be common interests

·  Splitting premises into smaller units would give more opportunities to young people to start something without failure being catastrophic

·  Should we try to create a digital and creative network within Alsager

Cheshire East

We want to find out more about key contacts and initiatives in Cheshire East so that we can take advantage of expertise and resources available. We need to make sure they know Alsager wants to move forward and see how they can help us. We also need to look at the open data Cheshire East makes available. [ https://opendata.cheshireeaaast.gov.uk ]

Two documents which may be of use have also been identified:

A review of the creative and digital sector in Cheshire East (May 2015)

Cheshire East Visitor Economy Strategy 2016-2020

Community engagement

We are looking at ways in which we can engage with various groups within the Alsager community. However, we believe that we now need to develop a position statement on the town centre which pulls together all the research which has been done to date together with the emerging ideas. This will enable us to have something to put to people to engage them and elicit their views and responses and ideas. The research includes not only the surveys but also discussions, meetings and best practice.

Town centre survey

We conducted a second week of the town survey (9-15 September) and gained an additional 108 responses, giving a total of 322 responses. We will not do any further survey weeks. Key findings are given below (percentages). Full details are available on the survey spreadsheet (Town Centre Survey Analysis).

322 responses

Gender: 62% female, 38% male

Age bands: 33% below 45, 66% above 45

Residence: 72% from Alsager, 28% from elsewhere

Travel to Alsager TC: 56% car, 37% walk, 6% other (bicycle, bus, train, mobility scooter/chair)

Frequency in Alsager TC: 81% several times a week, 8% once a week, 11% less often

Reasons in Alsager (some people multiple reasons): 51% shopping, 23% use local service, 13% library, 10% coffee, 9% meet friends/family, 9% look around, 22% other

Alsager meets most shopping needs: Yes 45%, No 53%

Rough view of TC: 38% good, 29% fair, 24% poor (9% unknown) [judgment based on other responses]

View of Alsger TC by age band
good / fair / poor / ? / Total
4-45 / 18% / 6% / 5% / 3% / 32%
46-81+ / 20% / 23% / 19% / 6% / 68%
Total / 38% / 29% / 24% / 9% / 100%

What people would like in Alsager

Common requests
More variety
Better supermarket
Aldi
Sainsbury's
Butcher
Greengrocer
Fishmonger
Artisan bakery
Delicatessan
Affordable, basic clothes - men, women, children (eg George)
Shoes
Quality/designer clothes
Children's toys eg for parties
Household goods eg Home Bargains
DIY and hardware
Bookshop
Petrol station
Browsable shops
Small independent shops
Art and gift shops
Craft materials
Boutiques
Decent restaurants
Cosmetics
School uniform
Sportswear
Individual suggestions
Wedding dress shop
Deli with tapas bar
Another pet shop
MacDonalds
Pound shop
Steakhouse/Sunday carvery
Frozen food shop eg Iceland
M&S Food

Business survey

28 completed businesses surveys have been returned. No analysis completed yet.

Sarah Anderson

Carrie Pletscher

27 September 2017

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