At The Priory Centre - St Neots Town Council

2
Priorities
Chairman of the
Town Centre Initiative
John Davies
St Neots Mayor
Cllr Paul Ursell
Editors
Roger Arguile and Philip Devonald
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St. Neots Town Centre Initiative
The Chairman’s
Column
a message from John Davies,
Chairman of St Neots Town Centre Initiative
OWEN EASTEAL
At the end of August, Owen Easteal, our Town Centre Manager (TCM) for
the last three years, left us to return to his first love, the Travel Industry.
Owen replaced David Gregory, our first full-time manager; so we have been
lucky with two good Managers. His is an unusual role. The TCM helps all
the volunteers in The Initiative which now has over 70 people now serving
on eight working groups, but his main efforts go into working with the
High Street area, supporting retailers with various training programmes,
developing Farmers Markets in the town (of which he was very proud,
making them twice monthly events. He also worked on occasional Town
Centre activities such as the Arts Festival, assisting the Carnival organisers
and leading the Christmas Lights Festival Team. Owen put a lot of effort into
these activities as much else: editing Priorities and expanding the use of the
Priory Belle and letting more people enjoy one of the Town’s biggest assets,
the River. Owen also saw his role as serving the Town and fostering the
partnership between the Town Council and The Initiative. We will miss Owen
as the TCM but have persuaded him to stay on our Management Group as
a local resident so that we do not lose his energy and experience. We hope
any new Town Centre Manager can live up to the standards set by the two
previous incumbents.
MANUFACTURING CLUB
The Town has lost Collins and Aikman Ltd and over the next year a large
part of Gates Hydraulic Ltd will depart to foreign parts. This shows the
tremendous pressure
that manufacturing is under in the UK, against low cost competition in
Eastern Europe and the Far East. Yet despite the gloom we have, in St Neots,
a dozen companies working together to help each other. We see the need
to work together as even more important in these tough conditions. The
quarterly Club meetings are senior managers coming together to hear
speakers on key issues and exchange news and views. Unusually for such
clubs there is more going on ie we have four working group operating.
The last of these has just been formed and is looking at Business Continuity
Planning, which is looking at how companies would handle a big incident
like fire or flooding and keep operating or recover quickly. The members
are looking at exchanging information on best practice but also how they
could help each other locally in an emergency. Helping this group is our
old Town Centre Manager, David Gregory, who now plays a key role in the
Cambridgeshire County Council’s Emergency Planning Department. At
our last Club meeting we heard a speaker from ‘i10’ (representing the ten
Universities in East Anglia), part of whose role is to bridge the gap between
researchers in the Universities and businesses who might need their ideas
and new products to be more competitive and survive and grow. The
theory is that we can not match the Far East and their low costs but we can
be quicker and smarter to find new ideas and market them. It is a survival
strategy that is worth following.
Regards
John Davies (Chairman of St Neots Town Centre Initiative)