From a unique environmentally focussed festival to a world-leading digital gaming event, plans for cleaner streets and new jobs for young people - Stoke-on-Trent City Centre BID sets out its’ objectives to build back better for a post-COVID world.

The past 12 months have changed our lives irrevocably, regardless of who we are, how much money we have and where we live. Life is different for all of us.

Similarly lockdowns, COVID-19 restrictions and the difficulties felt by so many different business sectors have impacted every city centre and every high street in the UK.

Just as we as individuals try to adjust to new ways of living and working, perhaps changing our career to keep money coming in and hunting for ways to add some joy to our lives, so too must city centres and the businesses within them.

Even before we’d heard of the word coronavirus, city centres were working to adapt and diversify for the future. But events of the past year have pressed the fast forward button to accelerate those trends.

In Stoke-on-Trent, the City Centre BID has ambitious plans to work with partners and key stakeholders across the city to ensure the city centre has the brightest possible future in a post-COVID world.

The BID’s board of directors recognise the need to focus on building back better to ensure the city centre not only emerges and thrives post-pandemic, but that it adapts to the needs of city residents and visitors over the coming years and decades.

Projects are plentiful, including some which can be introduced quickly and others which are currently in the planning stages and will reap benefits in the years to come.

Some projects are being worked on by the BID’s own team, others will see the BID work alongside key partners such as the city council, Staffordshire University and the city’s business leaders.

“We’re passionate about taking the city centre forwards and helping to shape the city centre that we think we should have in Stoke-on-Trent,” said Jonathan Bellamy, chair of Stoke-on-Trent City Centre BID.

“We know that for a long time the high street has been going through a measure of decline, and that’s all high streets. There are two main challenges - out of town shopping and online shopping.

“It’s caused city centres to begin to look at how they reposition themselves in response to changing consumer and customer habits, to look at how they can compete.

“The city centre and the businesses based within it have to have an eye on the future and how to prepare themselves for that.”

The BID has identified seven key focal points that underpin all of its plans - digital technology, youth, the environment, heritage, localism, loyalty and the need for quality living, garden and office spaces.

“COVID-19 has sped things up,” said Jonathan. “Some of the companies that have been struggling during this time were struggling anyway. COVID-19 has tested the weaknesses in businesses but it’s also helped to focus us on what the future needs to be.

“City centres are a retail destination, but today a thriving city centre needs to be so much more: a place people want to live, work, visit and play. Through our seven focal points we believe we can encourage that transformation.”

Sara Williams, Chief Executive of Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce, a BID director, is leading the BID’s plans for business community support. This includes around 200 new jobs for young people in the city centre under the Government's Kickstart scheme and a digital games event unlike anything previously staged in the UK.

She said: “The city centre is going to be hit really hard by unemployment, especially youth unemployment, as lots of young people have been involved in the retail and hospitality sectors.

“We’re keen to take advantage of the Government scheme to encourage employers to take on young people. The chamber is operating as a gateway for small businesses who need more support to take part in this or maybe haven’t employed many people before.

“We’re working with all of the businesses in the BID area to encourage them to take on young people, to help them with any HR issues and to help them to access £1,500 grants for equipment.”

The BID’s vision is for at least 200 young people to be employed in the city centre under the Kickstart scheme including two new marketing employees for the BID plus a new youth street ambassador.

Sara is also overseeing the BID’s plans for digital technology engagement and this year will see the launch of a Games Jam: a new, national-level digital event which is being planned alongside Staffordshire University.

It aims to build on Stoke-on-Trent becoming one of the first gigabit cities in the UK and the local Staffordshire University being the go to destination for aspiring programmers, having more than double the number of gaming students than any other university in the country.

“This is about building on Staffordshire University’s fantastic reputation for digital technology and making the city centre a place that young people will want to come to and use,” Sara said.

“This will be a physical and virtual event. COVID-19 allowing, people will need to come to the city centre to participate.

“It will also get some of the really nice things about Stoke-on-Trent out to a worldwide audience and promote our heritage and visitor tourism to a new demographic of people.”

“One of the great things about the BID is that we know how to ask for help for the city and are happy to work alongside partners,” she added. “Some projects won’t be carried out by the BID, our role can be to facilitate, engage and to have vision.”

Vision runs through Paul Williams’s key projects as the BID’s lead director for place marketing. He is tasked with encouraging links between city centre hospitality businesses and the ceramics industry, a loyalty scheme to encourage shoppers back to the city centre post-lockdown, celebrations to mark the return of the city’s Spitfire and a new Better World Festival.

For Paul, the city centre’s post-pandemic recovery will be served up on a plate - providing that plate has been made in Stoke-on-Trent of course. He wants to encourage better links between pottery firms and the tourism and hospitality sector, with the aim of ‘made in Stoke-on-Trent’ being a badge of honour that is universally worn with pride.

“If somebody comes to Stoke-on-Trent as a visitor you want them to feel a sense of place. You want them to know they’re in the spiritual home of British ceramics. Eating off a plate that was made in China doesn’t do that,” he said.

Paul wants to bring the big pottery manufacturers and the hospitality industry together around a table once it’s safe to do so, presumably for coffee in a city-made mug. He wants to tie in with the #dinesafe campaign backed by the city’s three MPs and to make eating off Stoke-on-Trent crockery such a draw for tourists that even the tiniest backstreet businesses will benefit.

The much-awaited return of the city's very own Spitfire (the designer Reginald Mitchell was born here) to its new gallery at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, will be a major city centre event. Co-ordinated by the city council, the BID will aim to support and celebrate such a national attraction.

Paul is also leading on plans for the MI-Rewards Loyalty Scheme, which will reward shoppers for visiting the city centre, and the Better World Festival, with its unique focus on profiling environmental issues, once public events are possible again.

Julie Davies OBE is the BID’s lead director for place management with a remit to improve the quality of how the city centre looks through the likes of Operation Sparkle to spruce up the city centre and plans for supporting local businesses through monthly makers markets.

She said: “The city centre has deteriorated massively over numerous years and I think the public seem to be of the opinion that the authorities don’t notice. We do notice and we see it as our responsibility to bring people together to take action.”

She says the BID can tackle some issues itself, some issues require city council intervention and others need the involvement of businesses and members of the public.

“Operation Sparkle is a project to encourage everybody to get involved and the BID is galvanising it and funding some of it. Businesses also have a responsibility to deliver some areas of Operation Sparkle and the people who use the city centre have a responsibility too. It’s like working in a messy kitchen, we all need to play our part to keep things cleaner and looking better.”

The project will involve regular inspections of every back street, alley and frontage in the city centre to identify things that can be improved. Like other BID plans, some positive changes can be brought about quickly and others will take time for the results to be seen.

One part of Operation Sparkle is to change people’s perceptions.

Julie said: “Things like homelessness and antisocial behaviour come under Operation Sparkle. A lot of people believe we’ve got a bigger homelessness and antisocial behaviour problem than anywhere else. The reality is that we don’t.

“Lots of agencies are working together to address issues. There is no bigger problem here than in any other local or regional centre, and people are working very hard to address those issues.”

Julie is also keen to stress that people who say ‘they need to improve the city centre’ should think about who ‘they’ are. For Julie, improving the city centre is a job for all of us.  “We’ve all got a part to play and collectively we can make a difference.”

BID chair Jonathan Bellamy summarised this moment in the city centre’s history: “Now is the time for leadership. Leadership that is confident, hopeful and bold. Leadership that can recognise and employ the synergy of partnerships for the greater good. Leadership that believes the future of our city centres can be even better than their pasts. Leadership that has a clear vision, despite the COVID cloud. We trust that something of that character is at the heart of the Stoke-on-Trent City Centre BID.”

To find out more about Stoke-on-Trent City Centre BID and its work visit www.stokeontrentcitycentre.co.uk.

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