Report - December 09

• New Businesses - We are now up to 32 new businesses in town exceeding my estimate of 30 by Christmas.
• Local Index - Out now and excellent! With DBID's contribution, all businesses with Directory entries got a free listing in the index, and those already participating got an upgrade too. This is a very useful publication.
• Promotion of Dorchester - With the important Christmas trade period upon us, after last years success resulting in record visitors to Cracker Night, the DBID has done the same and more this year. With advertising in Echo, VF, Marshwood Vale, Bournemouth Echo and Primary Times. We have negotiated hard and achieved over £4000 worth of advertising for less than £1500 in total. We have also promoted those businesses opening late on Wednesdays in the press and on the website.
• Press coverage - We have had a lot of activity in the press and media this last quarter including two BBC visits, a TV and radio interview with the Chairman about new busnesses in Dorchester and a very successful 'day out in Dorchester' with Pam and David from north Somerset.
• Cracker & Christmas lights - We paid for pre-event promotion and in addition to the £5k committed to the lights for every year, DBID pledged an additional £2000 out of surplus funds to help ensure that the Corn Exchange got properly lit this year.
• FREE parking - As a result of the great commitment given to me by a very good number of businesses in town, I was able to go to DCC and WDDC and persuade them to give us free parking for all the late night shopping evenings to Christmas. This has been very well received and I hope that with the publicity it will help improve trade on these Wednesdays until Christmas - time will tell.
• Park and Ride - FREE on Cracker night as a result of DBID intervention. This was not going to happen this year due to cuts, but DBID stepped in and for a very small contribution (<£200) we got DCC to run the service.
• Car parking - In partnership with WDDC, we now have RingGo pay by phone and after the press launch and other marketing activities, awareness is building and numbers using the system are growing each week. Alistair has been commissioned to do a series of cries and informational sessions in and around the car parks and town.
  The DBID has organised, paid for and is distributing 10,000 leaflets to businesses and attractions across town to promote this excellent new service to visitors and employees alike. We have also arranged extensive Radio coverage, Press and internet based publicity.
• On-street meters - I have a meeting with Oliver Letwin and Peter Noble early January to discuss what can be done and how soon to address this badly implemented and totally unwanted project in town.
  The result of my meeting with Tim Westwood last month was encouraging and the County Council have agreed to totally review the situation. Most of my requests were well received. It is likely that maximum stay will be extended to 3 hours from 1 hour in some locations (still hope to get them removed altogether in the Grove). Although he was not so positive about making them free after 5.00pm, he did indicate that they would be happy to follow WDDC's lead on late parking so my focus will be on encouraging WDDC to lead the way on this idea. The BID supports the Chamber's idea of making the first 30 minutes free, but we should expect to be flexible on this, maybe 20 minutes would be a fair compromise.
  I have also heard that DCC are in discussions with RingGo and are therefore considering bringing the on-street meters onto the RingGo scheme, which will be good news as it will make your stay extendable. I am also hoping to announce that the Railway car parks may also switch to RingGo early next year which would be excellent.
• On street Recycling - We now have some very nice on-street recycling bins in partnership with WDDC that have been a great improvement in South Street with more to follow elsewhere in town. We managed to hit our target of achieving this before the Christmas Cracker which I think deserves praise - well done Ian Doyle and his team at WDDC!
• Levy collection - some great success here with just one unpaid levy from a business which is now facing legal action for non-payment.
• Website - Blog and Twitter are both working well, and traffic is growing steadily thanks to the extra efforts of our outside web marketing specialist Dave Lakins who also did the youtube video with me. The blogs are acting as our news update on what is happening in the town.
• Mailshot - We sent out a mailshot last week to all those who have not yet engaged with DBID to tell them what they are missing and inviting them to get in contact. Already we have had three new contacts registering and a coupe of calls asking for more information.
• Virtual Dorchester - We have been waiting for Cracker Night to be out of the way but are now nearly ready to go with a Virtual Dorchester feature for the website. We will launch this early in 2010.
• Office move - We moved offices in December and are now at The Dorchester BID Company, 2nd Floor, 49 High West Street, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1UT. I can still be reached at philg@dorchesterdorset.co.uk and on 07799 494886.

Report Archive

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Report - October 09

• New businesses - We are getting close to 30 new businesses in town with three new in Antelope, two new in Tudor and more to come. Fantastic news and a good indication that DBID is having a positive effect in town.

• Car parking - The hottest topic in town presently and DBID is working very hard to come up with solutions and alternatives to the current arrangements. Taking car parks first (run by WDDC), I have been in a series of meetings over the last two months with the urgent aim to get a better system in place rather than just waiting for POE with is still a way off (mainly on cost grounds at £60-90k per car park!)

  My research identified that an all-new technology is rapidly overhauling POE in the form of Pay By Phone (PBP). Some of you know how this works already but essentially you arrive in the car park, dial a local number, enter a 4 digit car park code displayed by the PAD machine and select how long you wish to park. Then you just go shopping! The really clever bit is that 10 minutes before your ‘ticket’ expires you get a text alerting you and inviting you to extend your time remotely! Brilliant!

  We have our pilot agreed and it will go live before the end of November! Better still, it will be rolled out for the whole of West Dorset, and once registered on the system, someone using Ring Go in Bournemouth, Christchurch, Poole or more locally in Lyme or Bridport can come to Dorchester, park and dial as the system will recognise them from their phone number!

• On-street meters - I have a meeting with David Jenkins (DCC) (and a meeting with Tim Westwood on Tuesday) to update him on BID matters and appeal for common sense and an urgent review of the meter setup.

  I have and I am going to propose the following solution:

  1. Get rid of the things! - unfortunately never going to happen. Too much investment wasted. So, find a way to make them work such as:
  2. Increase maximum time to 2 or 3 hours depending on location (1 hour is not enough for some people who move slowly and cannot walk all the way from the car parks (but are not registered disabled))
  3. Make it FREE between 4.00pm and 9.00am DBID wants to boost the local economy by encouraging cafes andf shops to open a little later than present and if parking in Dorch EVERYWHERE was free after 4.00pm it might help this happen.
  4. Adopt the same PBP pilot that WDDC are using to make it easier to use and stop the shops all acting as change dispensers - they are not happy about this either!

• On street recycling - WDDC assure me that we will have our wonderful new triple purpose rubbish bins in time for the Christmas Cracker.
• Open 4 Business - I took part in the awards judging a few weeks ago.
• Levy collection - going well - a very small number still to pay but some more VC’s (voluntary contributions) from well-wishes and supporters.
• Roundabouts - Thanks to intervention of Oliver Letwin MP we are in dialogue with the Highways Agency who will work with us to identify suitable features for a trunk road roundabout.
• Litter bins - WDDC have no budget at present but are trying to see if they can start the roll out process before summer is over with a couple of new bins.
• Website - We now have a blog, and the optimisation that we are paying for is beginning to have a good effect on traffic. More content with a full set of museum pages, personal shopper etc.
• Redesign of bag - Currently postponed due to limited quality of entries so far.
• Sk8Jam event - A great day, DBID banner was there and proud. Thanks to Brian, Gerald, Keir and Alistair for helping. The Board has agreed a donation to the skate park committee as a show of support and in recognition of the draw the facilities have created bringing people to town. See photo page on the dorchesterdorset.com website.
• Christmas Cracker - We have subsidised advertising in the programme and for the Wessex FM package and are again providing most of the funding for the lights.
• Resort Magazine - The new edition is out and Dorchester has 6 pages again. Well done everyone!!
• The Local Index - The Dorchester edition is now out and as well as a subsidy for advertisers we negotiated a subsidised free line entry for every business registered on this site - another huge benefit of registering.
• Hanging basket pilot Durngate street - With the arrival of Victoria’s Closet we have a very active shop owner who is already helping to transform this part of Dorchester. I did my customary meet and greet as I do with every new business in town. This is partly to give them a warm welcome, find out a bit about what they do and tell them all about the DBID and what we are doing for Dorchester. Victoria and Tony have embraced the BID and are already benefiting from some of the projects, having had quite a bit of advertising subsidy and by registering on the DBID directory.

  Victoria came to me to discuss her ideas for brightening up Durngate Street a little with tubs and hanging baskets and we agreed to offer a small subsidy towards the cost of the baskets (£10 per basket). We are all in favour of getting shop owners to ‘buy in’ to a project rather than just being provided with something that they have no financial investment in. See the new sign at the head of Durngate Street. Thanks also to Alistair for his involvement here too.

  If this pilot project is a success, then DBID could consider rolling this out in other areas of town. The plan would be to identify a representative of that area (like Victoria) who would act as a local champion and co-ordinator. We would also be partnering the Town Council in some areas as I have identified that they have some spare capacity to offer a few more baskets on their scheme too.