What We Do

Download the Rugby Town Centre Action Plan by clicking here.

Steps Involved: We cover a broad spectrum of subjects from inward investment to running the Town centre markets. From marketing/promoting the town centre to sorting out historical buildings and renovating dilapidated shop fronts. From encouraging town centre living to taking a lead role in Town centre safety and security initiatives.

How do we operate

We attempt to have an input from all our major stakeholders; this not only reflected in the makeup of our board but more importantly at the Town Centre Workshop, which is organised every two years. The workshop sets out to determine the priorities and actions for the next five years. At the last workshop in June 2002 over 100 guests attended representing industry, banking, the youth forum, accounting, training, the law, accountants, the chamber, commercial agents, retailers and a whole host of other sectors. So we are a broad church that makes a serious attempt to do things by consensus but in the end we are an organisation that does things.

The main aim?

What have we achieved?

1. With our major stakeholders we have produced our first town centre vision and action plan, it was reported at the last Town centre workshop that 83% of the actions set had been achieved. A new action plan has been agreed and can be downloaded by clicking here.
2. Due to the major Town centre events and our marketing activity, sales have grown year on year since June 1999. We have also had four record breaking Christmas’s in a row. 

    

   

   Town Centre Event

    
3. We significantly revamped the shopnet system, which is a link between the Police, CCTV and over 50 retailers in the town centre aimed at persistent and convicted shoplifters. Last year shoplifting crime in the Town centre was down by 25% on the previous year as a direct result of this scheme.
4. We introduced pubnet which is similar to shopnet accept that it is aimed at persistent and convicted drug / violent offenders. Initially there were over 100 hundred arrests which has now dropped right off as these type of offenders have got the message. Over 90% of all pubs and clubs in the Town centre are in this scheme.

    

   Shopnet

   Pubnet

    

5. We introduced a very proactive inward investment policy where the MD of RUGBY FIRST and the Council speak to the local commercial agents every three months formally but most days of the week informally. As a result of this activity we now have a booming night economy and the lowest shop vacancy percentage in the Town's history.
6. We have led the way with regard the renovation of dilapidated shop fronts with great assistance from Rugby Borough Council with regard to grants and also the conversion of void space to Town centre flats. It is our stated policy to encourage Town centre living as we believe that tenants will take ownership of their own space.

Shop Front Conversions

Town Centre Flat Conversion

What of the future?

We will continue to do what we have been doing but we shall look to take a much more active part in bringing a hotel and major tourist attraction to the Town centre. We will continue to pursue our major objective of bringing more niche retailing to our town centre so as to meet our customer’s expectations. We shall develop two BID’s (business improvement districts) one to further enhance safety and security in the Town centre and the other to market the Town generically to the indigenous population. We will put in place a heavy weight programme with the backing of Rugby Borough Council and English Heritage, to sort out our historical buildings in the Town centre over the next 3-4 years. We will of course be focused on the new action plan and aiming to beat our 83% success rate last time.