Funding success for Chesterfield

There has been great news over the past few weeks with funding secured for businesses to develop and grow in Chesterfield.

 

£25m has been secured from the Regional Growth Fund for Sheffield City Region and Chesterfield has been fortunate to be part of this process. We know there will be just under £2m of the money for Chesterfield businesses, with potentially more for other companies in future, and this will be boosted to £10.1m as the businesses themselves put funding into the projects. The projects will secure 25 existing jobs and create an additional 205 jobs, all within Chesterfield borough. The majority will be related to new investment in manufacturing, both the development of new products and the introduction of new processes.

 

D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership also secured £5m from the Regional Growth Fund for the ‘Unlocking Investment Growth’ programme will means small and medium sized businesses can apply for grants of between £50,000 and £1m, which can be used to invest in individual schemes which help to create jobs, support business expansion and generate economic growth.

 

Chesterfield has also been successful in its bid for a £10k grant from the government for a Town Team Partner project. The bid, which was put forward by Destination Chesterfield and had the full support of the town’s MP, Toby Perkins and Chesterfield Borough Council was in response to the earlier unsuccessful bids for the Portas Pilot initiative.

 

This is excellent news for Chesterfield, the £10,000 funding will be added to £20,000 generated by the Chesterfield Champions scheme to launch ‘Incubation Street’, a new business start up scheme for Chesterfield. These are exactly the types of initiatives Destination Chesterfield and the Chesterfield Champions Scheme were set up for and we thank them all for their contributions which will go towards supporting the growth of the next generation of businesses in Chesterfield.

 

Details of how these funds can be accessed will be promoted on www.chesterfield.co.uk once full details are available.

Top of the class for retail

A national report revealed that Chesterfield is bucking the north-south divide with low shop vacancy rates. The latest figures from the Local Data Company (LDC) gives a detailed insight and analysis of 506 town centres and Chesterfield is third best of the largest centres in the country with just 8.7% of shops being empty, compared to the likes of Nottingham (30%), Stockport (28.4%) and Sheffield (26.1%).

Figures from the LDC report show an increase in shop vacancies across the East Midlands from 16.7% in 2011 to 17% in 2012. Chesterfield (8.7%) is the only town centre in the region that is in the top ten featuring amongst a predominant list of Southern based locations, including Central London, Cambridge and Kingston upon Thames.

The good news doesn’t end there on the retail front. A new Debenhams store will be opening shortly and there will be a further phase of development on the Ravenside Retail Park after two additional units have been approved and are due to be completed next summer.

Works are starting on the refurbishment of the Market Hall and the proposed Northern Gateway Projects and Walton Works are working their way through the planning process.

At Destination Chesterfield we want to continue to build on this success and will be once again running a marketing campaign on the run up to Christmas to attract people to shop and spend their leisure time in the town. Last year’s campaign was a great success generating up to an estimated £500,000 into the local economy.

Part of our inward investment campaigns will target the retailers and leisure providers we would like to see in the town, building on what is already here and we will also be launching a number of the initiatives that were included in our Portas Pilot bid thanks to the in-kind and financial support of the Chesterfield Champions.

These positive results can only be achieved by working together and this success is down to the hard work of the town centre businesses, agents, Chesterfield Borough Council and everyone one who works, shops and lives in the town centre.

A town to grow your business

A recent report by Experian, the leading global information service, for the BBC has highlighted Chesterfield in the top 5 in the country as a location for firms with the potential to grow.

The Experian report identifies these by assessing the characteristics of businesses within each local area and determines their growth potential based upon factors such as business ownership, size and foreign presence. They tend to be young, small companies, with directors showing entrepreneurial appetite and experience in other recent successful business ventures, have a wider corporate network and are involved in some form of international activity.

This BBC Local Growth Research also highlights that Chesterfield is one of the highest ranked local authority districts for exporting in the East Midlands and also that the town has all the facilities required to increase such export activity.

This is great news for Chesterfield and part of the work of Destination Chesterfield is not only to attract new investment into the Town but to support the businesses that are here and to help them grow.

Our recent bid for Chesterfield to become a Portas Pilot Town, also concentrates on business creation and growth within the retail sector. We have tried to look to the future in our application, setting out how we will support our existing businesses and grow new businesses, ensuring our successful town centre continues to prosper and doesn’t see the downturn other high streets have across England. Recent surveys have placed our vacant units at around 5% one of the lowest in England alongside Bond Street and Kensington High street in London.  We will find out if our application has been successful in May and you can view our supporting video below.