Report - September 08
- British Bids membership - successfully reduced from £881 to £350.
- Bag project update - The children's designs 2 & 3 are on hold for present till we see how the winning design sells. Distribution phase complete, total bag sales so far £814 and rising.
- Pedestrianisation - Full council cabinet meeting in October will hear sub-committee recommend go-ahead and hope to do so by Christmas. We need to keep pressure on and keep the story alive to add gravitas.
- Latest newsletter/mailshot - We produced and executed what proved to be our most successful mailing to date back in August. It resulted in a big surge of businesses registering on the website (30 new entries! Over
40% increase, we now have nearly ¼ of all businesses).
- Town marketing and promotion - Resort Magazine - Last year's off-season Resort had NO Dorchester entry at all, after a major push over the last few weeks, and with the help of the DBID's advertising offer, we have
achieved a minimum of 5 pages including advertising support from a good number of Dorchester businesses.
There is still some money left out of that allocated for this project, so we agreed to spend a little extra on a ¼ page ad for the Dorchester Cracker, Lights and promotion of shopping in Dorchester in the run up to Christmas.
- Website design activity - Keir & I have been developing ideas for the format of the Dorchester website complete with events diary business directory. One idea, for future implimentation is to have a page for jobs (£20 flat fee
for each vacancy?) and possibly a 'people market' for those looking for work. This would encourage more traffic to the site regularly.
- BID office update - We have moved! New office address is 2 Cornhill, Dorchester.
- I Attended the Chamber meeting to listen to Andrew Waddsworth on the Brewery square development and Simon Connibeare talking about future developments at Poundbury.
Both were warmly enthusiastic towards the aims of DBID.
Report - November 08
- Pedestrianisation - Great news! South Street will become pedestrianised from
November 24th. Initially there may be temporary barriers but asap the bollards will be installed. In operation from 9.30 till 4.30. footnote YES they are done hurrah!
- Website design activity - Dorchester's great new website www.dorchesterdorset.com went live from the end of
October and we already have sixty businesses in the Directory. Congratulations to Keir for the design, content and stability and thanks to all of you that helped
with the debugging and testing of the site pre-launch. Remember the DBID site remains at .co.uk and will be the 'backend' site for BID businesses with content being
updated regularly with news and offers for DBID businesses and the .com site is the public site containing the Business Directory, product/service finder and the
'what's on' feature. We have more things on the way as the site develops.
- Resort magazine - Now out and looks fantastic! With BID support and the positive response of a good number of local businesses joining us in this promotion we
achieved six pages of editorial and advertising for Dorchester. This makes us the second larges section
in the publication after Weymouth! The general feeling is that this exercise was a success, and we are
hoping to build on this with an 8 pages+ section in the summer edition. I hope seeing the publication
will encourage more Dorchester businesses to join us in this venture.
- Other PR - we have had a good deal of press coverage (and some radio) in the last few weeks with good stories on
the BID's recent successes including -
- Improvements to the park and ride (extra stop at the market 5 days a week)
- Enhanced street cleaning in the BID area (at least once a day now, was every 3 or 4 days in some cases
- The Dorchester plastic bag amnesty (we collected over 1000 old plastic bags outside Woolworths and gave away around 30 cotton and 20 canvas bags
- The launch of the Dorchester website
- The Shoppers Crèche idea was floated and has stirred up a lot of interest - Although this project is not in the
DBID plan and so can not be guaranteed any BID funding, if we can find a few sponsors (we already have a pledge
of £5000!) interested in coming up with the start up and initial running costs, the project aims to be
self-financing by providing childcare from baby to eight years old @ £3.50 per hour (max 3 hours). It is
thought that although there would only be around 20 places, this could support a facility for up to 100
children over the day as they arrive and leave in rotation. Users will be encouraged to pre-book but a
texting service will allow people waiting to know when there is space. There are three locations that have
been identified. BBC southwest (spotlight) want to run a piece on the crèche before Christmas.
- Meeting with Ian Doyle WDDC - Ian has replaced Jerry Cranmer has already helped with the street cleaning
and we are discussing ideas about bins and problems with gum and cigarette butts - He loves BID's and has personal experience of how successful they can be.
- Bag project update things have slowed down from the initial sales of bags but I would like to suggest that we offer the remaining bags in the run up to Christmas
at the special pricing to businesses for all new stock ordered. This should give the bags a boost and clear some
stock. The idea after all, is to get as many out there to encourage the reduced use of plastic bags.
- Can everyone please try and encourage their fellow business friends in the BID area to REGISTER and then do their business directory entry.
