Chamber responds to out of town restaurant approval
We are disappointed that approval has been given by Mendip District Council (MDC) for an edge of the bypass ‘family restaurant’ outside Frome between Sainsbury’s and the Mason’s Arms.
Frome Town Council, Selwood Parish Council and Frome Civic Society all objected to this development outside the established development boundary and contrary to the Local Plan.
The Chamber objected to this because, although the application proposes some small industrial units, an existing planning consent for industrial units has not been implemented because ‘there is no demand’. We doubt they will be built – they only appeared after two previous applications for the ‘family restaurant’ had been rejected.
We asked MDC’s Planning Officers to require that they were built at the same time as the ‘family restaurant’ but that hasn’t been done – we will see if they are ever built.
We don’t know whether to be amazed or pleased that the planning officer, having accepted our arguments that the applicant’s ‘requirements’ were excessive and simply designed to rule out any town centre in favour of the ‘drive past’ they wanted to build, that she then wrote: “on its own [MDC’s] evidence there are no available sequentially preferable sites in Frome. There are no currently available sites in Saxonvale, especially given a comprehensive scheme is required for the regeneration of the whole site and no such application has been successful to date.”
The fragmentation of the Saxonvale is the consequence of MDC having failed as planning authority to lead the development of a comprehensive scheme and has permitted the piecemeal development of the site contrary to its own Development Brief. It would be nice if they will insist on comprehensive development for the remains of the site.
Enterprise Mendip is hosting a comprehensive programme of free digital training to support Mendip based businesses to grow. The programme covers many topics from digital marketing to small business IT.
With a seminar called ‘The A – Z of Business Computing’ the programme aims to cover all aspects of digital support that local businesses may need.
The programme starts in Shepton on 20th February, moves to Wells on 6th March and will be repeated across Street & Glastonbury 3rd April.
The initiative is the work of Enterprise Mendip, participating local Chambers of Commerce and features local business professionals offering advice, 121 sessions, seminars, workshops, social media surgeries and think tanks.
The British Chambers of Commerce and Somerset Chamber are working together to understand Chamber members’ current priorities and concerns around digital infrastructure and skills.
It has put together a survey to capture your experiences and we’d encourage Frome businesses to take part. The survey is designed to understand the reliability of your business’s broadband connectivity and how this impacts on your business’s growth and productivity, whether your business has access to the digital skills it requires, and how cyber security impacts on your business and industry.
Find the survey here.
Dr Adam Marshall, Director General, British Chambers of Commerce, says:
“The results of the survey will be used by both the national and regional Chamber organisations in their engagement with stakeholders at the highest levels of Government, as well as with parliamentarians and regulators. Your input helps us to ensure that Chamber member’s concerns and priorities are reflected in government policy.
“The survey is open to all businesses and should take around 5 minutes to complete. All data collected is anonymised. We will represent Chamber members’ diverse interests based on the results. This survey closes at midnight on 3 February 2017. Please note that some of the questions in this survey relate to the set-up of your business’s broadband connection. Please feel free to forward this survey on to the appropriate member of your team.”
Mendip District Council has again organised free parking in the town in the run-up to Christmas.
Shoppers will be able to park for free in the Cattle Market Car park on for Small Business Saturday on 3rd December 2016.
And free parking will also apply to all Mendip District Council run pay and display car parks in the town from Monday 19 December to Thursday 24 December 2016 inclusive.
Time restrictions will continue to apply in the Market Place which is already free to park in for a maximum of 1 hour Monday – Tuesday and Thursday – Friday.
We join with Frome Town Council in welcoming this initiative from the district council. We hope it will support businesses in the town centre in the run up to Christmas and will help customers to ‘shop local’ for their Christmas gifts and goodies.
As usual, we will be putting up notices promoting this and will provide small versions for traders to have on display so make sure you let your customers know well in advance!
2015-16 has been a busy year for the Chamber. This Spring we held an open meeting for members and local businesses to discuss the role of the Chamber and to help plan future activities, and a lot of what we are doing and planning now has been shaped by the feedback we received.
We have decided this year to make Chamber membership free for 2016 to encourage as many businesses as possible to join, and as a result are seeing a steady stream on new members. This will make the Chamber truly representative of the whole business community in the town. In future we plan to revise the membership fee to a simple flat rate, with no VAT following deregistration this year to make it more affordable to smaller businesses.
We have invested in a new website and received valuable assistance from Hannah and Alan Morden to update our logo and publicity material and advise us on marketing generally.
Current project: to look at the benefits for our members of working more closely with Somerset Chamber, Inspire (Wessex Chambers) and Business West (Bristol/Bath/S Glos) – and others.
REPRESENTATION
At the open meeting Neil Howlett summed up our lobbying activity as:
“To be a pain in the neck to those in power, and to congratulate them when they do something well”
We commented on the proposed Saxonvale development and were not unhappy when the developer withdrew what we felt was an inappropriate planning application. We have opposed developments on B&T, Marston Gate and Weston Vinyls sites where in each case we feel employment land is being lost in favour of residential development. We frequently meet businesses looking unsuccessfully for business premises in Frome, so this is an area we regularly bring to the attention of town and district councils.
We represented Frome property professionals to urge MDC to approve local search service.
On the plus side, we were pleased to see some first steps towards fulfilling some of our wish list in our 2015 Town Centre Manifesto.
EDUCATION & NETWORKING
Hosted an informal visit by a member of the Byron Bay and Lismore chambers in Australia to learn what those chamber do and what we could learn and implement in Frome.
Having previously run networking breakfasts at most on a quarterly basis, we are pleased to have been able to work closely with FTC and Mairi Connolly of A M Personnel, both of whom were also organising similar events, to deliver regular monthlybusiness breakfast on the 1st Tuesday of every month, with the objective of being town-based most months but held in a local business once a quarter – so far we have held breakfasts at Edventure, Dennis Maps, Frome Community College & DNA Worldwide, with the town centre breakfasts moving from the Archangel to the Cheese & Grain, Assembly Rooms and Old Church School to accommodate the growing numbers who attend.
Again working in partnership with FTC we have been able to deliver a full monthly programme of our popular “Discuss & Do” seminar/workshop events on the 4th Tuesday of each month from March 2016. So far we have held sessions on employment law, The Living Wage, social media, e-commerce, business strategy and ‘cloud’ computing. The October D&D will be a practical workshop on essential health and safety for small businesses.
Once again we received funding from MDC’s “Enterprise Mendip” funds to help us publicise and deliver D&D events and enable us to provide it free of charge to all attendees.
Chamber members supported mock interviews and job fair at FCC
Worked closely with Mark Brookes at FTC to expand the monthly Retail Group which meets on the 1st Tuesday of each month at the Cornerhouse, and, largely due to Mark’s efforts on the ground as Town Centre Community Co-Ordinator, the membership of the group has grown significantly. We are pleased to welcome Mark as a member of the committee where we hope he will continue to be able to help us to support town centre businesses.
Future plans – we are always open to ideas and suggestions for future activities; we are currently looking at the possibility of hosting a Digital High Street conference in 2017.
CO-ORDINATING AND PROMOTION
Helping to promote and publicise the Christmas Extravaganza, Small Business Saturday and other town centre events
Promoted the 2016 Mendip Business Awards and were delighted to see some Frome businesses among the award winners. We plan to work with Frome businesses in 2017 to achieve even more awards for the town!
Committee members attended meetings with FTC looking at feasibility of creating a BID in centre of Frome.
Sponsored the Frome directory published by The List to enable them to include a comprehensive directory of all town centre businesses.
The latest Business Breakfast went off road this month, to the Standerwick Centre out by Mole Valley Farmers and the Cattle Market.
It provided an opportunity to showcase another great facility that is close to Frome and with plenty of space for the 40 or so businesses that came to see David Warburton, MP for Somerton and Frome. The breakfast was fantastic, piping hot and plenty to spare.
In spite of the early start and lack of breakfast, David did a great job of sharing the committees and initiatives that he is involved in, ranging from working on the area’s Road links (plans to dual the A303 at Stonehenge by 2020), rolling out superfast Broadband (meant to be 90% by end of this year, 95% by 2017), and requests to increase the number of buses, and improve the availability of direct fast trains to London.
There was of course discussion about Brexit and the latest upheaval from the High Court’s recent judgement. Most importantly there was an opportunity for everyone to ask questions and get involved.
This is part of a rolling programme of ours, and we look forward to another visit next year when we can check in to see how much of this policy has been actioned and catch up with the news from Whitehall.
It also flagged up that while we have been working hard on the relationship with the Frome Town Council and our local MP, we need to be arranging this same level of interaction with both Mendip District Council and Somerset County Council who also have an important influence on Frome and how we work together.
On Tuesday 25th October, the Frome & District Chamber of Commerce and Frome Town Council hosted another of their highly popular Discuss & Do series. This month, local businesses and community enterprises came together at The Cornerhouse to discuss the importance of Health & Safety in the workplace and identify key issues, as well as take away a skeleton of what is needed to set up a policy for your business.
Mike Herbert of Showsmiths Ltd and Rowena Stewart of The Lighthouse joined this month’s Discuss & Do to share their experiences and highlight necessary points when considering Health & Safety. The evening led to a lively discussion with many attendees sharing their own issues, anecdotes, and solutions when handing policies and risk assessments.
As is always the case the discussion unearthed plenty of gold, with practical tips on good-housekeeping, keeping sign-in sheets active, and making key documents readily available in the event of an emergency when time is short and panic can set in. It also became clear how important the training of staff members is, and that a strong workforce is created through a team’s ability to take care of themselves, their co-workers and customers without putting themselves at risk.
To keep up to date with the latest Discuss & Do news and to find out more about future events, contact Charlie Orr at Frome Town Council or call 01373 465757.
Frome Chamber of Commerce will this month unveil its new branding identity which aims to bring to life the qualities of the organisation – based in supporting the community and bringing people together.
In this they have adapted the existing logo and strap line which is now ‘Frome to Grow’ – a play on words that says exactly what the organisation is about.
Alan and Hannah Morden from HVM have led the re-design and worked in collaboration with the Chamber as well as a number of local creative business to bring it all to life.
Hannah says “This was an opportunity for the local community to work together. The project involved local photographers, designers, printers and developers and the result highlights what is possible when working together. The new look and feel is just the beginning of where the Chamber Of Commerce can go.”
The new identity will be carried through all pieces of communication, including the launch of the new website, developed by Stellasoft, which aims to connect local businesses. A calendar of local business events, business profiles to promote members in the community and a simple joining process are just some of the features that will provide a user friendly experience.
The project was hugely supported by local photographer Mervyn Clingan of Taking Pictures who has provided photographs that represent the town, the people and the events that have been held, and Superior printing have who have done all the artwork and printing so far.
The process was a very simple partnership as all involved easily worked together with the same purpose. With this complete, Frome Chamber can now communicate all its activities, and will continue to play an active role in key community events such as the Frome Business Breakfast and Discuss & Do – held each month as a way to connect local businesses.
The new branding is also evident on their social channels including facebook, twitter and linkedin. As part of the new re-launch, Frome Chamber of Commerce is promoting free membership until the end of the year as an opportunity for more local members to connect with the community. For more information email hello@fromechamber.com
The latest Discuss & Do was once again a well attended interactive workshop with over 25 attendees learning and sharing their experiences to support the small businesses in the town. This time the evening centred on What is a Brand?
Alan Morden opened the evening with a brief talk, sharing some of his experiences while working with an international design agency in creating a brand for something as large as country (New Zealand), or as simple as a village bakery, along with his most recent project in helping the Frome Chamber of Commerce.
We all have a brand (the original word comes from branding cattle in the USA), and it is our way of presenting ourselves to the world.. do we choose that carefully, are we consistent with it, and is it in everything we do?
Hannah Morden of DNA Worldwide then facilitated the workshop to encourage participants to write down the five key or unique things that underpin our businesses, and then discuss these within a small group and then as a whole. It was a lively debate, sharing our uniqueness, with the group discussing and providing feedback to all.
What was particularly interesting was when people could connect to those unique or special things about their business, suddenly it became so much more alive and simple to communicate.
The next Discuss & Do will be on 27th September and will again be an interactive session, this time focused on improving our IT Skills.
Again working in partnership with FTC we have been able to deliver a full monthly programme of our popular 
Hannah says “This was an opportunity for the local community to work together. The project involved local photographers, designers, printers and developers and the result highlights what is possible when working together. The new look and feel is just the beginning of where the Chamber Of Commerce can go.”
