Question
With the regeneration turning Wokingham town centre into a building site, the impact on traffic through the town, the opening of the Lexicon and now the introduction of traffic wardens, local retailers are suffering badly from a reduction in footfall and therefore revenue. This has caused shops to close and some of our larger key retailers have left the town or are in the process of leaving. What is Wokingham Borough Council doing to support our remaining retailers, particularly the smaller independent ones who add character, and keep people coming into to Wokingham?
Minutes:
Question
With the regeneration turning Wokingham town centre into a building site, the impact on traffic through the town, the opening of the Lexicon and now the introduction of traffic wardens, local retailers are suffering badly from a reduction in footfall and therefore revenue. This has caused shops to close and some of our larger key retailers have left the town or are in the process of leaving. What is Wokingham Borough Council doing to support our remaining retailers, particularly the smaller independent ones who add character, and keep people coming into Wokingham?
Answer
We did discuss this last night actually as you know at the extensive workshop. I was going to give you a very detailed answer but I think my colleagues would be upset if I was to go through every single thing. But just a couple of points that I would like to bring out and that is that some of these businesses that have closed are for reasons outside of Wokingham. Cara is one of them as the business went into administration. Things like Wetherspoons; there is a lot of interest, they have given a year’s notice to do something else, and a lot of people would like to take their place.
I would like to pick up on a couple of points the traffic warden references are a bit worrying I think because more rigorous enforcement of parking will not only make the Borough safer, and this is particularly around schools, but will also provide a greater turnover of shoppers in short stay spaces, where people were parking illegally all day.
As you know we had a meeting last night and we reviewed all the pieces that we put in place. We have more ideas to consider so I will not go through all the list of things we had already discussed with them.
So, we do feel the pain of shops and the businesses and we have taken action to help them. We will continue to do so in ways we have discussed in detail last night and others we also heard last night. The one thing I would like to urge everybody is that all local Members and others do start talking the town up; the town has great shops, cafes, pubs and restaurants and is very much open for business.
Supplementary Question
Whilst I appreciate what has happened in recent events and the ‘Free after Three’ is a good start I am also aware what Councillor Cowan said in terms of the two hours floating window but my concern is the scheme that I know you are going to discuss i.e. Agenda Item 58 it only goes up to the end of January. What is the plan after that?
Supplementary Answer
We chose the end of January as we got the January sales so it is just a window in time. By then a lot of the town centre traffic works would have certainly moved on a pace we hope. Again we will look at it and also some ideas that came out of last night. We are listening and we are going through all the options.