Alsager Neighbourhood Plan

Report of the Town Centre Working Group

10August 2017

Activities undertaken since the last report (6July 2017)

Visits

Foxlowe Arts Centre, Leek (10 July 2017)

A group of us went to look at the Foxlowe Arts Centre in Leek, which has been instrumental in generating a much greater sense of community and a cultural revolution within the town. It is in a lovely old building in the centre of town and houses a lot of different cultural activities, run mostly by volunteers. This inspired us to think about attempting to do something similar in Alsager, as part of developing Alsager as an arts and culture town, possibly focusing on the west end of town and possibly making better use of the Town Council office building.

Poynton - shared space scheme (18 July 2017)

Carrie and Sarah visited Poynton to have a look at their road scheme so see for ourselves how it worked for drivers and pedestrians. We were pleasantly surprised at how well it seemed to work, including for partially sighted (having spoken to some people there). Carrie wrote up a report of our visit and it has been circulated.

Best Practice in British High Streets(27 July 2017)

Sarah, Carrie and Rachel attended this conference in Northwich with speakers sharing their experiences of developing town centres and high streets. Notes from the meeting have been circulated. It was encouraging that many of the points made were ones that we have already taken on board (eg changing nature of town centres, importance of social and leisure activities, importance of image and identity, crucial role of independent shops, need for a long term plan and vision, importance of local support including businesses, be positive and combat the inevitable negativity, etc).

Discussions

Date / Who / Discussions
18/7/2017 / Shirley Jones
Town Councillor / Following our visit to the Foxlowe Arts Centre I wanted to explore with Shirley the possibility of adapting and using the Town Council offices for arts purposes. She was keen, saying that the Town Council was already considering how to acquire the offices from Cheshire East (who had had difficulty in letting out the top floor). It might be possible for the Town Council and Alsager arts organisations to form a partnership with a view to the council officers having the top floor and arts organisations managing the ground floor for public access. Such a partnership would be able to bid for arts grants. I agreed to put together a proposal to go to the Town Council.

Town Council offices

As agreed with Shirley Jones we did put together a proposal about the Town Council offices, which Christine passed to David Dingle. [Since I had heard nothing further I called David and resent the proposal by email on 8 August.]

Highways

Rob Welch, the Design Team Leader for Cheshire East Highways, came to Alsager at our invitation on 25 July, to look at the possibilities and constraints for developing the town centre into a more attractive and safe environment, easily navigated by everyone. Eight people attended the meeting (plus Rob). A report of the visit has been circulated. There are a number of actions which Rob is following up.

Town centre working group

Vision

The first formal meeting of the working group took place on 13 July. There was general agreement with the direction in which we are going, as follows:

  • create a clear vision, the sort of place we want, and then we have a greater chance of attracting funds to realise the vision
  • use highways, landscaping, Alsager SPD and Cheshire East Design Guide, underpinned by Local Plan and Neighbourhood Plan policies, to create a unified, active and attractive town centre
  • boundaries of the town centre as set out in the Alsager Town Centre Strategy 2012
  • create an identity around the themes of Alsager artisans, arts and culture, health and wellbeing, family-friendly, it's good to meet, community events
  • find ways of encouraging people to walk towards the west end of the town to discover and use what is there
  • develop the west end of town as an arts and culture quarter
  • employ a town centre manager to help drive forward aspects of the vision

Surveys

We also discussed the forthcoming surveys. The Town Centre survey will be conducted one week a month for a few months (the first being 5-11 August). The Business Survey will be administered by each of us taking a section of the town centre and going through the survey with the businesses, over the next few weeks. Additional help with either of these would be much appreciated. Various suggestions were made with respect to the town centre aspects of the Household Survey.

Facebook page

We also felt that we should raise again the issue of having a dedicated Face Book page for the NP. This would not be a group page (with lots of comments which would need to be constantly monitored and managed) but a page where we could announce stuff and which people could like and share. This would help to raise our profile, reach a different demographic, and provide some statistics as part of the evidence base.

Sarah Anderson

Carrie Pletscher

8August 2017