Celebrating our retail scene

Did you know that Destination Chesterfield has been around for three and a half years in March?

During this time I am proud and delighted to have been part of the team that has helped spread the message of our town’s success and make it a place businesses want to invest in and people want to live.

We have experienced some great achievements during this time, however it’s important to take time to reflect on this success; where we’ve come from and where we are going to. That’s why the Celebrate Chesterfield events are so important. We held our latest one on 19th March and 200 members of the local business community gathered at the Proact Stadium to hear from myself the Destination Chesterfield team.

Whilst we might have done the talking , we are in no doubt that it is the engagement of the local community – businesses, schools and residents – that has been instrumental in the tremendous success of Destination Chesterfield since the campaign began in 2010.

Today we have more than 140 Chesterfield Champions and the support for the campaign is stronger than ever, many taking the time to get actively involved either speaking at or sponsoring Destination Chesterfield events.

Our brand new Retail Awards are no exception. Launched at the Celebrate Chesterfield event, the awards capitalise on the town’s ongoing success as one of the UK’s top 10 best performing centres with the least vacant shops.

They aim to seek out, recognise, celebrate and promote Chesterfield’s retailers as well as highlighting their commitment and importance to the town and the local economy. Our town has a thriving retail economy which is envied nationally.

Where other town centres are faced with high vacancy rates, Chesterfield is bucking the trend and attracting high street names such as Debenhams and ToysRus as well as independent retailers, giving us an excellent mix of shops, helping us attract visitors to our town and investors to the area who are keen to capitalise on our retail success. Only last month it was announced that the national department store Boyes would be opening in Chesterfield.

The success of these awards however is down to you. Shops and stores can only win if they are nominated by you, their customers.

Making a nomination is free and the nomination period is open from 1st April – 30th April with the winner being announced at a grand awards ceremony at the Assembly Rooms on 18th June.

If you’re reading this following a recent shopping trip and you want to recognise the store for their excellent customer service or brilliant disabled access, then nominate now by simply filling in the form or online at www.chesterfield.co.uk/retailawards.

Make no mistake, you are instrumental in the success of the 2014 Chesterfield Retail Awards.

A successful year for Chesterfield

Each month I endeavour to provide a snapshot of Destination Chesterfield’s current successes and future plans for the town. As we enter the New Year I thought now would be an appropriate time to reflect on all that Chesterfield has achieved to date , paving the way for more good news, development and investment in 2014.

Probably our proudest achievement as a town is that we’re emerging from this recession in better shape than ever. As my colleague and Vice Chair of Destination Chesterfield Cllr John Burrows tells us: “We could have chosen to bunker down and ride out the recession but we didn’t. We chose to forge ahead with our marketing plans.”

As a result, we’re coming out of this recession fighting and we have the figures to prove it.

In May, the 16 hectare, £340 million Chesterfield Waterside development was announced as one of the UK’s largest Regeneration and Renewal projects. With detailed planning permission granted towards the end of 2013, work will start on the first residential phase early in the New Year. Already it has been hailed as an exciting example of best practice regeneration taking a largely vacant area centre and creating a vibrant new environment of buildings and open spaces, finishing runner up to the Olympic Park in the National Regeneration and Renewal awards.

In July we reported a housing boom, well before other towns and cities in the UK. House prices in the Town have risen *7.7%, the highest figure throughout Derbyshire, which puts us above the national average house price increase of 6.5% a year.

In September, Chesterfield was named as the only town north of the Watford Gap to be in the top ten of towns with the least shop vacancies. The town’s vacancy rate – which fell from 8.7 per cent last year to 7.7 per cent in 2013 – puts us in the top ten large centres in the country, way below the 13.5 per cent average.

Our retail offering has improved month-on-month, with large high street names and independent retailers choosing to make Chesterfield their home. Throughout 2013 we welcomed a number of major retailers to our town, including TK Maxx, B&M Bargains, Hobbycraft and Asda Living.

While other high streets may be strugglings, Chesterfield’s is growing with retailers attracted by a wealth of available property and development sites. We further added to this offering when we celebrated the re-opening of the Market hall in October after its £4 million refurbishment, helping attract more independent retailers to both the town centre as well as outlying areas like Chatsworth Road and Whittington Moor

As part of the growth in property and retail, our food and drink offering has improved substantially in recent years, so much so that we hosted our very own Food and Drink Awards in October with none other than Ainsley Harriott as the host. I am delighted to report that we are already looking ahead to the 2014 Chesterfield Food and Drink Awards with some sponsors already signed up.

We have built a very powerful investment message for our town and in November we took it to Westminster, where we met potential investors from the property and retail sectors as well as the Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna MP. He praised Destination Chesterfield saying, ‘it is a good example of the public and private sector working together and taking responsibility to attract investment and promote their town.’ Looking at everything we have achieved together these last 12 months, I couldn’t have said it better myself

*http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/uk_house_prices/html/17ud.stm