It takes a team.
Without a doubt the lovely town centre in Chippenham has long needed some tender loving care, and following the covid lock-down, which coincided with the demise of the BID that had failed to gain a second term, this need was even more pronounced. With those conditions in place a group of local organisations, businesses, and members of the community, got together in a bid to regenerate the town centre at a time when so much had changed.
A few months later the Town Community Team conducted a survey asking for views on the town centre and the message that came back clearly indicated people still saw it as existing simply from the ‘Bridge to the Burtons’, with the overall view that a major improvement was needed to increase the number of independent shops in the town.
A walk-around business survey followed which was conducted by four volunteers during a cold winter weekend in February 2022 and the results made it clear that while there were already many independent shops throughout the town (45%), these existed outside of the narrow definition of the town centre as existing from ‘Bridge to Burtons’.
Analysis of results clearly pointed that there was a need to look at developing a wider vision for the town centre, one from the Causeway through to Hathaway Park, which would capture the essence of Chippenham as a town with a huge variety of key businesses, quirky shops, historic buildings, and a beautiful park/river area - all of which are within a twenty-minute walk.
The community movement that began in 2021 continues to grow with an expanding voluntary membership that forms the main Town Team linking the movement with the statutory authorities, though the active involvement of each Quarter.
These are all community people who have come together to give their time voluntarily because they are keen to develop the areas in which they live and work - with a simple aim of contributing to a vision of the future of Chippenham that will become a reality to benefit both this generation and those still to come.
