Health of our Market Towns
Information gathering is crucial to the development of the council’s strategies and policies. With regard to our town centres the following information is collected on a regular basis:
• Footfall surveys - these are commissioned annually and give an indication of the number of people visiting our town centres. A summary of the latest results can be found by following the link to the right.
• Visitor perception surveys - were last conducted in 2007 and capture the opinions of a random sample of town centre visitors’ opinions about each town. Questions include perceptions of safety, cleanliness, improvements, retail mix, parking and toilet provision, reasons for visiting the town and desired improvements for the future. Results are compared with previous surveys.
• Benchmarking reports - During 2009 our town partnerships participated in a market town benchmarking project. They have gathered key information about the performance of our towns which is compared against that of other participating towns around the country. Around 50 towns took part in 2009 and the final reports can be found in the links on the right..