At The Priory Centre - St Neots Town Council
At The Priory Centre - St Neots Town Council
At The Priory Centre - St Neots Town Council
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
2<br />
Priorities<br />
Chairman of the<br />
<strong>Town</strong> <strong>Centre</strong> Initiative<br />
John Davies<br />
<strong>St</strong> <strong>Neots</strong> Mayor<br />
Cllr Paul Ursell<br />
Editors<br />
Roger Arguile and Philip Devonald<br />
Imagery and articles submitted in this publication are subject to<br />
Copyright from various sources and no reproduction of any part<br />
of this publication is permissible without the prior consent of<br />
<strong>St</strong>. <strong>Neots</strong> <strong>Town</strong> <strong>Centre</strong> Initiative, <strong>St</strong>. <strong>Neots</strong> <strong>Town</strong> <strong>Council</strong> and TSGcs<br />
as a whole. Part thereof does not give permission for its use.<br />
Tel: 01480 213555<br />
Fax: 01480 218887<br />
email: sales@tsgcs.co.uk<br />
web: www.tsgcs.co.uk<br />
Design, Repro, Print and Web Design,<br />
105 Great North Road, Eaton Socon, <strong>St</strong>. <strong>Neots</strong>,<br />
Cambs PE19 8EL<br />
<strong>St</strong>. <strong>Neots</strong> <strong>Town</strong> <strong>Council</strong><br />
www.stneots-tc.gov.uk<br />
<strong>St</strong>. <strong>Neots</strong> <strong>Town</strong> <strong>Centre</strong> Initiative<br />
<strong>The</strong> Chairman’s<br />
Column<br />
a message from John Davies,<br />
Chairman of <strong>St</strong> <strong>Neots</strong> <strong>Town</strong> <strong>Centre</strong> Initiative<br />
OWEN EASTEAL<br />
<strong>At</strong> the end of August, Owen Easteal, our <strong>Town</strong> <strong>Centre</strong> Manager (TCM) for<br />
the last three years, left us to return to his first love, the Travel Industry.<br />
Owen replaced David Gregory, our first full-time manager; so we have been<br />
lucky with two good Managers. His is an unusual role. <strong>The</strong> TCM helps all<br />
the volunteers in <strong>The</strong> Initiative which now has over 70 people now serving<br />
on eight working groups, but his main efforts go into working with the<br />
High <strong>St</strong>reet area, supporting retailers with various training programmes,<br />
developing Farmers Markets in the town (of which he was very proud,<br />
making them twice monthly events. He also worked on occasional <strong>Town</strong><br />
<strong>Centre</strong> activities such as the Arts Festival, assisting the Carnival organisers<br />
and leading the Christmas Lights Festival Team. Owen put a lot of effort into<br />
these activities as much else: editing Priorities and expanding the use of the<br />
<strong>Priory</strong> Belle and letting more people enjoy one of the <strong>Town</strong>’s biggest assets,<br />
the River. Owen also saw his role as serving the <strong>Town</strong> and fostering the<br />
partnership between the <strong>Town</strong> <strong>Council</strong> and <strong>The</strong> Initiative. We will miss Owen<br />
as the TCM but have persuaded him to stay on our Management Group as<br />
a local resident so that we do not lose his energy and experience. We hope<br />
any new <strong>Town</strong> <strong>Centre</strong> Manager can live up to the standards set by the two<br />
previous incumbents.<br />
MANUFACTURING CLUB<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Town</strong> has lost Collins and Aikman Ltd and over the next year a large<br />
part of Gates Hydraulic Ltd will depart to foreign parts. This shows the<br />
tremendous pressure<br />
that manufacturing is under in the UK, against low cost competition in<br />
Eastern Europe and the Far East. Yet despite the gloom we have, in <strong>St</strong> <strong>Neots</strong>,<br />
a dozen companies working together to help each other. We see the need<br />
to work together as even more important in these tough conditions. <strong>The</strong><br />
quarterly Club meetings are senior managers coming together to hear<br />
speakers on key issues and exchange news and views. Unusually for such<br />
clubs there is more going on ie we have four working group operating.<br />
<strong>The</strong> last of these has just been formed and is looking at Business Continuity<br />
Planning, which is looking at how companies would handle a big incident<br />
like fire or flooding and keep operating or recover quickly. <strong>The</strong> members<br />
are looking at exchanging information on best practice but also how they<br />
could help each other locally in an emergency. Helping this group is our<br />
old <strong>Town</strong> <strong>Centre</strong> Manager, David Gregory, who now plays a key role in the<br />
Cambridgeshire County <strong>Council</strong>’s Emergency Planning Department. <strong>At</strong><br />
our last Club meeting we heard a speaker from ‘i10’ (representing the ten<br />
Universities in East Anglia), part of whose role is to bridge the gap between<br />
researchers in the Universities and businesses who might need their ideas<br />
and new products to be more competitive and survive and grow. <strong>The</strong><br />
theory is that we can not match the Far East and their low costs but we can<br />
be quicker and smarter to find new ideas and market them. It is a survival<br />
strategy that is worth following.<br />
Regards<br />
John Davies (Chairman of <strong>St</strong> <strong>Neots</strong> <strong>Town</strong> <strong>Centre</strong> Initiative)