Celebrating Chesterfield

It’s that time of year again, time to celebrate and look back on everything that Chesterfield has achieved.

All too often we hear about the good news in isolation and it can be overshadowed by the bad which means it can be forgotten in the melee. That’s why Destination Chesterfield’s annual Celebrate event is so important.

This will be our third Celebrate Chesterfield event and takes place on Wednesday 25 March at the Winding Wheel. Last year was standing room only, however the stream of good news delivered by the Destination Chesterfield Team, left us all uplifted!

This year, Celebrate will be no different. We’ve made a point of building on last year’s success and striving to be even better in 2015.  In June we’ll be welcoming again the hugely successful Retail Awards and the Food and Drink Awards in October. We’ll also be celebrating our thriving manufacturing sector with Made in Chesterfield in November. This year it will be running over two weeks and will bring even more young people, teachers and businesses together.

It’s important to me that the young people who live here know that there is a future for them and marketing Chesterfield and its successful business sectors is crucial to this. We have a number of thriving industries and there is huge employment opportunities in all of them. The Manufacturing sector in particular is telling us they want apprentices now!

The hospitality industry is set to boom also. In the same week it was announced that not only was Chesterfield home to one of the top five hotels in the UK – Casa, but also that the outskirts of the town was to be the location for the £400 million Peak Development.

Whether you’re a resident, investor, business or visitor, there are exciting times ahead for Chesterfield. However, we must not forget about the past and present. So much has been achieved since we launched Destination Chesterfield in 2011 and I for one am looking forward to sharing the town’s numerous successes at Celebrate.

You too can share in the success. The event is free to attend, you simply need to register at www.chesterfield.co.uk/celebrate

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.

Investment Confidence in Chesterfield

This month I thought I would up date you on the key development sites in the town following the latest Chesterfield Champions event, Inspired Investment at the B2Net Stadium.  There was positive news on a number of the projects.

Markham Vale has been announced as part of the proposed Enterprise Zone for the Sheffield City Region which it is hoped that it will be confirmed by Government later in the year. This will give incentives to businesses to start up and relocate to Chesterfield and will focus on the towns traditional strengths of manufacturing.

Positive progress continues to be made with the proposals for the Chesterfield Waterside scheme. The project, recently rated at Number 50 in Regeneration and renewal magazines table of the UK’s largest developments, now has Architects in place preparing detailed proposals for individual commercial buildings to be constructed around the newly constructed canal basin, located on the former Trebor Bassett site. In addition, detailed layouts are also being prepared for the housing element of the scheme, to be located on the former Arnold Laver timber yard, accessed from Brimington road, and it is hoped that this element of the scheme will shortly be the subject of a detailed planning application.

Other projects discussed at the event were the proposed Northern Gateway development.

For the latest news on the key developments in Chesterfield, don’t forget to visit http://www.chesterfield.co.uk/