Town and Parish Update from West Devon Borough Council

Town and Parish Council Update

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February 2022

Working hard to stimulate a thriving economy in West Devon

WADDLE SHOPS WD


West Devon Borough Council's Placemaking and Communications teams have been working together toward delivering objectives within the strategic plan’s Stimulating a Thriving Economy theme.

This will help to shape the way we deliver our marketing and promotional activity for the region and identify ways to help support our Town and Parish councils over the months and years ahead.

Below is an update on some of our projects.

We will be contacting each town individually over the coming weeks to discuss upcoming projects further.

In the meantime, if you would like any further information, please contact Nita Jarram at nita.jarram@swdevon.gov.uk


#MyPlace Christmas Campaign

Barnaby


The aim of the MyPlace Christmas campaign was to encourage residents to visit our towns and support local businesses in the run up to Christmas, boosting footfall, dwell time and spend.

The campaign was rolled out in November 2021 and proved to be a great way to engage with our town councils to bring together a comprehensive campaign that promoted events and activities across our region.

With European Regional Development funding, adverts were placed in local publications and across social media.

Analysis has been undertaken to gain insight into our digital activity, showing for example which posts were more successful at engaging the public. This will be used to help us to better shape both Christmas marketing activities for 2022 and general promotions through the year.

To date we have not held data that we could measure success against, so this will help to set a baseline so we can set targets and KPIs.

We have also collected visitor numbers to our car parks and footfall to some of the key events which will be used as part of a wider town health report project.

A snapshot of some of the social media data is below and shows some really good reach figures across our social media and website pages which we hope to build on over the coming months.

It would also be really useful to hear first-hand how you felt the Christmas period performed in your town – for example any good news/success stories which could be shared with other towns that may offer ideas for event and promotion planning in the future.

Social Media

West Devon Social Media Stats

  • In West Devon, on Facebook overall impressions were 38,394, with an overall reach of 33,736.
  • On West Devon Twitter, overall impressions were 4,439 with a potential reach of 126,748.
  • On West Devon Instagram, impressions were 976 with a reach of 927.
Gathered around laptop

Website Stats for the Christmas Landing Page

Please see the stats below for the West Devon Borough Council website visits to the Landing Page which listed the Christmas events between 22 November and 31 December:

  • 419 hits, of which 321 were unique visits
  • 37 entries on the page came directly from social media (92% of those were from Facebook, 8% from Twitter)
  • 272 arrived at the page from the homepage, 27 from search engines, 8 from internal searches where the most commonly searched term was “Christmas”
  • The average time spent on the page was 1 minute and 28 seconds.

From the landing page…

  • 118 people left the site entirely
  • 45% returned to the main homepage
  • 18% went to Tavistock events
  • 11% went to Okehampton events
  • 1% went to Chagford
  • 1% went to Hatherleigh
  • 15% left to other pages on our site

Please see below links for a more comprehensive breakdown of the above analysis.

Social Media Stats - Overall

Website Statistics

Social Media Stats - Individual Communities


New Year Campaign

Heritage WD

 

As discussed during the planning stages of the Christmas campaign, the MyPlace campaign is currently being developed to encourage residents and visitors to visit their high streets and support local businesses through February and March.

Advertising will be placed with local publications and further social media activity will be undertaken.

Adverts are planned in the following publications:

  • Tavistock Times Gazette
  • Okehampton Times
  • Tamar Valley Times
  • Moorlander

Street Dressing and Public Realm Improvements

Street Dressing


We are supporting towns with street dressing and public realm improvements to help brighten up the high streets and make them welcoming to visitors.

Bunting, banners and empty shop window vinyls will be available. We will be in touch with each town directly over the coming weeks to see how we can work together to and further support your high streets.


Queen's Platinum Jubilee

Jubilee Logo

 

You may have seen recent bulletins with information on how communities can get involved in the Queen’s Jubilee. We will soon be sending out more details on any support we can offer. If you haven’t yet completed our short survey regarding planned activities for this occasion, please visit our website.

The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Activity Fund has been launched by Sport England to celebrate the occasion. The fund is offering grants between £300 and £10,000 for projects that help people to become more active, particularly people who may otherwise have less opportunity to be active and who live in areas of disadvantage.

Sport England is keen to see projects that are built from local experience and feedback; that bring together various groups and communities; and also make the most of local facilities and equipment.

Find out more about the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Activity Fund.


Financial Support For Businesses

Money


West Devon Borough Council is delivering a number of grant schemes for businesses on behalf of the Government.

The COVID Recovery Grant, which was open to applications during November and early December, received over 300 applications. Projects have been shortlisted and final decisions are being made so that successful applicants can be notified in the first week of February.

The grants team is delivering grants of up to £6,000 for hospitality and leisure businesses which were impacted by restrictions relating to the Omicron COVID variant. The deadline for businesses to apply for these grants is 18 March.

There are also small discretionary grants of between £1,000 and £2,700 being delivered to other businesses which have been negatively affected by Omicron.

The grants focus on businesses within or supporting the hospitality and leisure sectors, but which don’t qualify for the main Hospitality and Leisure Grant.

For more information about any of the grant funding currently available to your business community, visit our website.


New Grant for Voluntary and Community Groups

COVID Hardship Fund WD


Voluntary groups in West Devon are invited to apply for their share of a £30,000 funding pot to support wellbeing projects across the Borough.

We've launched a new grant for local voluntary and community groups. Applications are welcomed from all types of community groups, from local youth groups and befriending services to community transport organisations and sports clubs. 

Worth up to £1,000 per group, the money can be used for any project or scheme that makes a positive difference to the health and wellbeing of local people. Community groups should apply for a grant on our website by 7 March 2022.

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