Just a quick update on the state of play for SBA members and all St Leonards Traders.

• In the next financial year Council spending will be 50%, (read it again, 50%) down on a couple of years ago.
• There will be no money for traders, no money for regeneration schemes, no money to help the private sector, (which includes artists as well as businesses), no money at all.
• Parking and Roads will be moving to East Sussex County Council. They are more likely to say “who” rather than “how can I help” when we ring them about parking issues.
• It looks like we are odds on for a double dip recession, beginning when Greece goes toes up.
• No-one in St Leonards seems to give a patootie about future marketing or any plans to try and bring visitors and money into the area.

On the bright side we have:

• Olympic torch coming through
• Olympics
• Jubilee

Sadly no-one got in contact with any ideas for these.

To compete we need a plan, a strategy, some idea of how we are going to market St Leonards.

If you go on the internet a Google around a bit you will see that lots, LOTS, of other small towns are further down the road with this.

They have planned, they have put those plans into action. And they are getting the trade we want.

We cannot rely on external funding for this. With money extremely short the council will support local essential services not private sector shops.

So what do we do?

First we see who wants to help, to contribute ideas, to get this moving.

Then the group starts work.

Interested? Please email Matthew on info@sba-online.co.uk and we can arrange a chat.

• No super large pubs, or high concentration of pubs
• Water: by the sea, or a river, or a lake.

St Leonards is by the sea, and most of the pubs have closed down.

So, no excuses eh?

While we are on water, so as to speak, good luck to The Lido plan which should hear about funding very soon. Great plans, great project.

They have just being awarded this in a project started by HBC, and are running a weekend long workshop(s) in The Magnet Centre next weekend, Friday 20th and Saturday 21st January.

There is one workshop specifically aimed at local business, the Local Economy Workshop, Friday, 18:15 (lasts about an hour)

Everyone is welcome to all workshops.

You can find out more by downloading a leaflet here, or by contacting Gensing Forum, on Silchester Road. 01424 438 291, office@gcsl.org.uk

I went to a Town Hall meeting about marketing St Leonards last night. I didn’t know anything about it until a day or so before, so had no idea what to expect, but assumed it would be about marketing St Leonards. From my point of view, which I think is the SBA point of view, marketing St Leonards should have the aim of getting a higher footfall of customers in the area. What we want is an identity for St Leonards distinct from Hastings, and to use that to make St Leonards a destination in it’s own right.

The Council view?

Councillors and council officers took a different view. They think we should be happy to be included as part of Hastings, and pointed to the way they were doing this.

Things like forgetting to put us on the map going out in a new council publication. Things like giving us a whole page in that publication. (They couldn’t say how many pages in the publication, lets guess about 100. We get a whole page.?) Things like setting up a website which we could then leave for 2 years. (After which we presume the HBC officer in charge of cleaning cobwebs off websites might book us in, perhaps in 2015?)

What shall we do?

St Leonards doesn’t want independence, we aren’t going for Devo-max even. We just feel that promoting our own identity will be a positive benefit to any marketing, that some marketing will improve footfall and that being promoted as a suburb, even a nice suburb, of Hastings just isn’t enough.

Which means that we do it ourselves. To find out what you want, what you feel might work, how you feel you could contribute I have set up a forum on a website. The website is a suggestion for a St Leonards website, but there will be lots of other ways of marketing.

Thw website is here: http://thestleonardsonsea.co.uk/

The forum is here: http://thestleonardsonsea.co.uk/forum/

(You have to enter your name and email to use the forum. This is to deter computer made spam. Your details will not be used to spam you or given to anyone else.)

2011 Review.

With Bill Orton, a founding member, chairman and backbone of The SBA retiring in December 2010 we had to move on, elect new committee members and focus on where The SBA was going.

This was reviewed in the first part of 2011 with an important decision being made to formalize the structure with a new constitution. This meant being taken more seriously by official bodies such as Hastings Borough Council as we formally represented business in St Leonards from their point of view.

After consultations a new constitution was adopted and after that a new chair and vice chairs were elected. There are two vice chairs as Bill Orton has very kindly agreed to stay on with a watching brief to help smooth the way forward.

All this has meant upheaval and change. However the core functions of The SBA; traffic, parking, antisocial behaviour and rubbish collection are still the important core functions; all helping St Leonards businesses do business.

During the rest of 2011 The SBA worked on Christmas in St Leonards 2011, and future plans for St Leonards.

The SBA also welcomed Sylvia Bennett, vice chair of Gensing Forum to the SBA committee, forging stronger bonds between the business and residential communities of St Leonards. The first event we will do together is the Olympic Torch coming through St Leonards in July.

2012 Plans

As well as maintaining the core functions of The SBA we aim to start making St Leonards a destination shopping and leisure area. This might be an uphill battle given the apathy experienced with the Christmas arrangements, but a core group believes that we can’t rely on government, the council or fate to make things happen, and just might have to do things ourselves.

Plans include:

• Helping in the production of a quarterly Events Publication
• Establishing a website listing all businesses, events, attractions and excitement in St Leonards
• Helping in the guidance and establishment of new facilities along the seafront
• Helping the establishment of any new business, especially those that will increase footfall for all traders.

If you would like to help, have any ideas, can offer input of any kind we would be more than pleased to hear from you. Please email info@sba-online.co.uk and a committee member will get back to you.

Happy, and prosperous New Year.

The new year will see The SBA start moving forward with some important plans and the start of some potentially great projects to help all the traders in the area, as well as the area as a whole.

If you are interested in finding out more and even giving a hand please email at the contact here.

However any actions at the drinkers themselves are not amazingly effective on their own without the rest of the community playing it’s part.

This is why it is sad to see drunks and beggars gathering outside the shops that sell them the booze, and those shops, sometimes, selling illegally: either to people with ASBOS, people who are drunk, minors and selling illegal booze. Norman Road is largely clear of this now, with exceptions, and it’s sad to see it happening elsewhere on the front.

Councillor Birch had details in his newsletter and we hope that effective action is taken to stop any proliferation of dodgy booze and street drinkers.

For instance some local shops were offered free coverage on The Observer and a local website.

Thats maybe 20,000 people seeing their shop.

Given the average takeup of 2%, (low for local), that’s 400 people interested in that shop.

Lets say 5%, only 5%, come and buy something.

Would you say No thanks! to 20 new customers who cost virtually nothing to acquire?

20 customers spending money? 20 people to turn into repeat customers? 20 people spreading word of mouth recommendations about you?

Are you missing chances?

I’ve been following the subject on a couple of threads on Business Forums and it seems most small business owners with a retail presence think she could have done better. (Polite version).

For instance one recommendation calls for less red tape, (who is going to disagree?), but another 11 recommendations call for more rules, more oversight, more bureaucracy.

Another recurring point is that she really doesn’t have relevant experience: she is a big agency person and TV star, not a high street trader, and she has never been a high street trader.

A third recurring point on the Business forums is that if we really want things to change we will have to do it ourselves.