DURING one of the most well attended town council meetings in recent history, Holsworthy Town Council welcomed Julia Conway, of Holsworthy Pets, to speak about ways in which the town’s local businesses could work together to help the area thrive.

Julia, along with a number of other local business owners, attended the meeting on Wednesday, April 3, to give a presentation regarding the promotion of the independent shops and businesses in Holsworthy.

Julia represented a number of local business owners who have joined together to look at how they can support and encourage business growth and tourism in Holsworthy. Their aim during the meeting was to get the council on board and ask for their support in lobbying Torridge District Council for the funding needed to start up new ‘focus groups’ which will aim to pull more businesses together to work on solutions for the town to prevent its decline.

Julia said: “Basically, over the last six months, maybe a bit longer, its become more and more apparent and we are really quite keen to explore ways in which traders and local businesses in the town can work together with the council to raise the profile of Holsworthy as a beautiful, historical market town and basically help support businesses to get things on profile and pull more people and tourism into the town.

“It’s quite important that we secure the future for as many independent businesses as we can. Having had quite a few conversations with some of the traders we are aware that some are struggling. If we are all thriving then people can grow their businesses and potentially employ more people and maintain socialisation.”

She added: “We also want to enhance the shopping experience. We quite often get a lot of comments from our customers, we get some good comments but we also get a lot of negative ones about shopping experience and how they don’t really like coming into Holsworthy and if they do they literally ‘nip in and nip out again’ — which I think is a real shame considering what we have here.”

She said, in the initial stages, the group would like to engage the services of Torridge Economic Development Team. The team have been working in Bideford recently with the town council and local traders and have staged a workshop to help businesses learn how to better promote themselves and Julia said this would be a positive thing for Holsworthy to make use of.

She continued: “That’s just the starting point and then hopefully we could drive that forward and establish a focus group with local traders, businesses and skilled professionals — and hopefully representation from the council, which would make it a more effective campaign if we’ve got your backing.”

She added: “We can then explore ways in which we can all promote the town and local businesses — there are an awful lot of brilliant ideas out there from the people we’ve spoken to around the town and I think it would be a shame to not tap into those ideas.”

Councillors then had the opportunity to ask Julia questions about the group’s idea.

Cllr John Allen asked: “Are you saying you’re going to reactivate the chamber of trade, that seems to be what you’re saying? Because we’ve had that before in the town and it’s never really been successful.”

Julia said that wasn’t their aim as they want a focus group to concentrate on creating a specific plan for the town to raise the profile of the area.

Cllr Allen said he thought they would need to get the backing of all local retailers before they took their plans forward so they didn’t proceed with an idea that wasn’t the consensus of the town. Julia said they had to startsomewhere and would be interested in holding a public meeting with local traders in the future.

However, they believed the first step would be to get the Torridge Economic Development Team on board, which, she had been informed, could only be achieved with the backing of the town council.

Mayor Cllr Jon Hutchings asked: “So what is it you would actually like from the town council?”

Julia said to trigger the help of the Torridge Economic Development Team the council would have to approach a Torridge Development Officer and ask for the support on behalf of the group.

Cllr Hutchings added: “Sorry, I’m looking at you strangely as I’m wondering why they have told you to come through us. I don’t really understand, its a Torridge Development Officer, surely you approaching him is just as good as us?”

Julia said she wasn’t sure of the reason and Cllr Hutchings offered to find out. He added: “I think one of the first things you have to do is pull people together. It’s important to get people together and signed up to ‘something’, even if it’s just people signed up to your focus group so you have some backing.”

Town clerk Vanessa Saunders warned: “I think we may find that the help is limited. Bideford have a very active chamber so are in a better position for funding, but it doesn’t stop us doing something.

“That training course you mentioned was done by North Devon Plus so I will contact them and see if they can do one locally.”

Julia said it was that kind of knowledge the group wanted to pull on from the town councillors.

Cllr Pete Shepherd, asked: “You said people are saying some negative things about the town, what sort of things are they? Cleanliness?”

Julia said comments were more focused on the overall shopping experience, with many people saying they ‘wouldn’t stay any longer than they had to’.

Cllr Shepherd added: “Do you think free parking in the Manor Car Park might help that?”

Julia said yes but other councillors were cautious as to the likelihood of that being implemented with several saying ‘never’.

Julia raised the point that parking was free after 12pm on a Saturday with many businesses in the town closing their doors at that time. She said this, and many other ideas, would be things the focus group could look into.

Devon County Councillor for the Holsworthy Ward Barry Parsons said he had something to add and requested the chair’s permission to speak.

Cllr Hutchings allowed it and Cllr Parsons said: “I had a meeting on March 25, with the head of economy [enterprise and skills] at Devon County Council Keri Denton and also cabinet member Rufus Gilbert who has the economy as part of his portfolio. The reason I did that is because, for a very long time, I have made representation on behalf of this area and feeling it’s a kind of ‘lost world’ when you look at the other side of Devon.

“I asked for that meeting to look at ways we can improve infrastructure, to improve shopping experiences, especially in our market towns and especially in the area of Torridge because the response that came back was ‘we are working in Northern Devon, but it always seems to be Bideford, Barnstaple, Ilfracombe, and it doesn’t seem to be in this area’. They would be happy to come down here and have conversations with yourselves — and this might be another opportunity for us to look at Fair Trade too.”

The town clerk reminded the council that money has been set aside in next year’s budget for ‘town regeneration projects’ to improve the appearance of the town square and Cllr Hutchings added that a Devon Communities Together Fund was available.

Julia thanked the councillors for their time and their advice.