Bolster Wotton Meeting

25th March 2025

I attended a busy Bolster Wotton event last night. My local Councillor chums, Catherine and Linda were also there to help support the town in whatever way they can too. These are my informal notes.

Personal comment

The wise amongst us realise that there is little Councils (Town, District or County) can do directly regarding the High Street. Everything, more or less, falls to the entrepreneurial spirit of residents and risks taken by existing business owners to service the needs of the community. However the recently approved Draft Council Plan 2025-2029 is worth a look at, esp. the Local Economy section. SDC is keen to work in partnership in building a more sustainable and inclusive local economy. In terms of the High Street, this means there maybe opportunities for shop front grants etc. but nothing is set in stone. Also, SDC leases car parks in the town, this effectively contras the business rates incurred by the Town Council, which goes a long way to subsidise the free parking that we have all become accustomed to and enjoy! Obviously, we will fight at SDC for the Town, but SDC will not exist for much longer due to 'English Devolution'! I should have stood up and said this!

Meeting kick off

Anyway, the meeting kicked off with Andrea, the Town Clerk, mentioning that both Fred and Jeremy from Good Food on the Edge and Jackie at Make It Home have both celebrated their one year anniversary on our High Street! :) There was also talk about co-operative cross marketing between businesses. Ali at Flowers under the Edge doing the flowers for Good Food under the Edge, for example.

Stroud and District Chamber of Trade

Tom Berry runs a record shop in Stroud. He joined the CoT just a Tony Davey was standing down. So he's taken on the role as Chair. No point in moaning about business we all need to get on and get content shared. The CoT represents about 700 businesses across the district. As individual businesses it's hard to make impact but they have a strong voice to decision makers. Including subjects like the policing of shop lifting, parking charges with the council.

They hold members meetings. An accountant came to one and talked about recent changes to NI and the minimum wage. Next month they have a social media person coming in. The CoT is recognised and responsible for driving tourism to the district, via the Visit Stroud website. Many members are on that platform, it's used for restaurant finding etc. Make sure you are on Visit Stroud!

There are also Vistitor info centres who stock leaflets, visitor attraction get the leaflets to CoT. The Heritage centre is our place. Local events to keep tourists in district attractions. Co-ordinate activity across district. Nailsworth has a CoT and is growing, Stroud Cot is well established. Stroud CoT wants to bring them together. Get high street proud. Q's. Excellent traffic to vist Stroud web site, Tony Davey would know more detail. 10k visits per week.

FSB

Alison our local FSB rep spoke about how they protect small business. They offer insurance and legal services. £160 pa. for lots of business benefits. They are a non-profit organisation and lobby parliament for businesses. They are running a business boot camp in May. Book online £10. Go listen to business experts from the Gloucestershire area. Local networking online and face-2-face. Q's

Loads of events coming up on table. Visit UTEA for whole raft of things coming up in April.

Heritage Centre

Jeff talked about a number of events going on in the town driven by the Heritage Centre. tbh, I became overwhelmed by the descriptions and may have got the detail muddled. Best checkout the Heritage Centre website. Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska’s Centenary Celebration. A polish writer who used to live in Wotton. Creating Identity through Masks and Photography. A free talk at Wotton Cinema on Saturday afternoon. Charity raising photographers around the world. A Polish Dinner at Good Food Kitchen and Bar. Info on sheet, which Cllr Cohen grabbed! Sunday film Ken Russel 18 cert.

Summer Event

Fred(?) Long Street social summer event. Stalls. business may open later, performances. More details at next meeting

Wotton Pride

Wotton Pride in June13th - June 14th, building on last years success. music performance, more details next month

Plus other events.

GL12

Kathleen Burden is a local Estate agent and keen to develop networking in the community in a less formal relaxed way. Promoting a raffle for every meeting, announce winners at next meeting. On offer was a selection of goodies from Cotswold Natrual Food Store. Free entry to raffle just do one of the following:-

• Leave a good Google review presence.
  
• Shout out on social media.
  
• Refer someone, network.

One evening every other month with Bolster Wotton. Every other month coffee morning. Personal directory pdf contacts.

Wrap up and Questions

At this point I put my laptop away so not so much detail.

There was lots of discussion on cross marketing between businesses. It was also hammered home how important it is to get onto Visit Stroud. There was some vocal comment the Wotton is distinct from Stroud.

Whilst events can be registered on to the visit Stroud site it was suggested that the Town Council already has a well established web site with forthcoming event information. Indeed, as pointed out at the meeting ''wotton calendar' achieves any businesses holy grail of 'top spot' on Google.

Realising the incredible opportunity it was pointed out that we should be leveraging that. It seems the Wotton cinema and the Heritage are already on the case. It was pointed out that Council meetings aren't even on there. The clerk pointed out that they do not have capacity to do this. One person offered to do this for the council free of charge. But, apparently there are contractual reasons why that is impossible.

Loads more discussion and ideas were batted around. Everyone helped collapsing the tables and stacking the chairs. Thanks to Andrea and Stroud CoT for setting up and organising the event all my feedback has been positive.

My background

I was asked about my background last night. During the 80's and 90's I was a support manager for a national computer dealership chain, headquartered in Tockington but with branches in London, Cardiff, Bristol and Coventry. Way back in 2002 I setup the Cookability web site and achieved phenomenal growth then navigated the massive impact of predatory tax avoiding big US tech over 20+ years. The site was hand coded by me and won a couple of awards (Dept. of Trade and Industry, SWRDA).

Anyway, I'm quite IT savvy and have a really good understanding about how and why certain businesses do really well online and why others find it incredibly difficult. I don't have all the answers. But still manage to run a successful small high street shop, run a social media platform (a bit like Facebook), a Zoom equivalent as well as District Council and voluntary work.

I'm always in the shop for a chat and don't mind people running things/ideas past me.........

Edit: Numerous typos.....