A full report will appear on the Choose Abingdon website later in the week. So the best I can do is to summarise the partnership’s achievements and plans – as I understood them at the AGM. The partnership is a forum of councils and local business with an annual budget of 60K, and one paid partnership manager: Heather Brown.
The following projects have been taken on by Choose Abingdon in the first 2 years …
- Whats On Leaflet – put about in town shops and often in the Round&About magazine to promote Abingdon events.
- Gazebos Scheme – on hire every week – nominal fee to cover wear. Being used most weekends by community groups.
- Community Shop. Displays from community groups changing weekly. This week sees the Carbon Cutters including Abingdon Hydro.
- Local Excellence Market – allows local Abingdon and villages to show off their wares, including local shops. Also gives a first chance to smaller craft producers to try out a market stall at low cost.
- Positive Abingdon PR – Heather, the partnership manager is often to be seen in town going above and beyond, and she is always trying to promote Abingdon in local publications as a place to: visit, shop and eat.
- Choose Abingdon Loyalty Card – seen as the partnership flagship as it links people and businesses in a 2 way communication benefiting both, and makes Abingdon people feel a part of Abingdon. There are now 1400 card holders.
- The Choose Abingdon website has been live for some time. This Friday an interactive Whats On will be launched once it has been preloaded with known events. That should supersede abingdondiary.co.uk.
- Town Map boards… One has been out there at Rye Farm Car Park since June. The rest will soon follow. The information board in the Market Place will continue to be used for information, and an additional map be added nearby.
- 52 Things to Do – a new local tourist booklet out in November, with local poems, artwork, and 52 things to do in Abingdon, Wantage and surrounds – has had much input from the partnership.
- Walks will be added to the website and printed walk routes with nice artwork will be on sale soon.
- A video will be going on Youtube aimed at attracting foreign journalists, and others, to talk about Abingdon during the Olympics and beyond.
Going forward, the partnership are now using management science techniques to plan what projects they should take on next in a more strategic sense. This diagram is my very simplistic understanding of how it works.
Using something called segment analysis they graded 43 projects, according to how they affect various segment groups (young, old, independent traders etc.) with costs and risks against benefits. The high cost / high benefit projects are already underway by councils and Scottish Widows.
That has given Choose Abingdon a new list of possible future projects: those in small print on the diagram.
Very useful report, thanks for publishing it.
abingdondiary.co.uk great web site for content, but the design really lets it down, in fact it puts you off looking any further than the first page view, as the colours are so garish.
The Choose Abingdon Partnership is obviously in close contact with retailers and businesses in Abingdon and, as such, I presume has a lot of information about the wants, needs and preferences of the local people. Therefore, I wonder, did its officers have the opportunity to make any input to the discussions of the various bodies who are deciding the future of the Shopping Precinct and the Charter development?
The retailers and other businesses have a direct route into these discussions via the Chamber of Commerce and Abingdon Business Alliance and have had face to face meetings with those making the decisions – they do not need to go through ChAP to do this.
Thanks for that. I suppose I was just wondering who would represent the consumers i.e. those of us inhabitants who continue to shop regularly in Abingdon and who do our best to support businesses in the town centre.
We elect our local councillors to do just that and although they will argue that some of the Shopping Centre decisions are outside their control, they DO have influence; in addition, the District Council are the Planning Authority and the County Council will have to approve the road transport arrangements. So we should all be lobbying our councillors.
Also the planning application for the first phase of the Shopping centre refurbishment is now in and we can comment directly on that via the District Council website. Closing date is 26 October.
Finally, the Friends of Abingdon, the town’s Civic Society is making representations about the proposals – see their website for infromation and contact details.
On Saturday 3 rd March Abingdon will regain its fairtrade status and will be holding a Fairtrade Market on the Market Place from 10am-3pm and the Presentation of the Certificate will be made at 11am to the Mayor of Abingdon there will be stalls selling Fairtrade Products and also a Fairtrade information stall