MINUTES of an OPEN GENERAL MEETING of ST AUSTELL BAY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE held on TUESDAY 24th JUNE 2014 in At St Austell Print Conference Room at 6pm.
[Meeting started at: 18.04]
An introduction to SAPC and the Conference facilities - Peter Moody
New home for St. Austell Printing Company, after 33 years in the town centre. In residence for a year and one month.
Have 5-6 different conference rooms to be suitable for different sizes. From 120 people seated to smaller rooms for just 10. With stunning views over the whole of the bay, plus full catering doing breakfasts, lunches and evenings.
Never done conferences before and started last June. They have been an amazing success, which is a good thing for St. Austell. Of the people who do come for conferences, 90% would never come to St. Austell for a conference or business, but we are now bringing in people from all over the county who are very impressed by what they see in St. Austell.
In the building there are 3 serviced offices for 3 months rental on and off for start up and new businesses. These filled up straight away so we wish we had more. There are 22 units on site part of the business park (1,000 sq ft). Hopefully start-ups move across to these units. The business plan was to try and get 7 into the new units. Very flexible so can have top unit and put a staircase between and have one down stairs and two upstairs, for example. 7th unit taken over in March and now 5 units rented already this year. Waldon’s taking over 4 who had been in Sticker for 30 years. Initially they couldn’t find anything in St. Austell and nearly went to Indian Queens. They are part of a London PLC and will be making their head office here. They wanted to be within access to Newquay airport so they can fly people from London down for conferences.
Doubled the size of the printing works. Used to be 12,000 sq ft in Truro Road. Now occupy just less than 40,000 sq ft. 60% of SAPC contracts come from London and Oxford. Our digital area we are looking to grow and have the capacity for that. We also have the facility of an adjoining mailing unit next to the print works employing 10-15 casual workers.
1. Welcome & Apologies from the Chair – David Halton (DH)
Present: Adrian Mutton, Allan Clare, Andrew Robertson, Chris O’Connell, Darren Thompson, David Avery, Dave Watson, David Halton (Chairman), Gerald Banks, Jacky Swain (Vice Chair), Jane Hicks, Jessica Milln (Secretary), Julian Hocking, Kevin Fusher, Kevin Parks, Mark Lewis (Junior Vice Chair), Margaret Buttfield, Peter Crawford, Peter Moody, Peter Quinn, Rainer Newton, Richard Austin, Sara Gibson, Sonia Bass, Stephen Nott, Stuart Volkner, Sue Ford, Tony Cousins.
Also Present: Cllrs Brian Palmer, Derek Collins, Nicky Oxenham, Malcolm Brown, Malcolm Harris, Richard Pears, Val BradfordEd Coode, Daisy Cousins, Gavin Davis, Hayley Newton, Jo Burke, Kylie Lambert, Mel Colton-Dyer, Pam Abraham,
Apologies for Absence: Mark Torr, Ian Chalmers, James Staughton, Mike Stanford, David Avery, Sally Heard, Simon Prior, Susan Ashby, Daryl Cook, Ross Sundercombe, Lois Stephen, Sheila Vanloo, Russell Lawrence, Tim Atkins, Sam Weller, Nicola Hoar.
Apologies sent from invitees:Cllrs. Tom French, John Keast, Doug Scrafton and Anne and Steve Double (currently walking to Westminster), Andy Davies (Cornwall Staff Agency), Linden Jones (Cornwall Advertisers & Cornwall Review), David Davies (PC Universe).
Introduction and Welcome of new members to the Chamber
Gerald Banks - Access Training (South West) Ltd
Stuart Volkner – Intrinsic Surveillance Ltd
Dave Watson – Penrice Academy
Lois Stephen – Peter Williams & Co
2. . Minutes of meeting held on 21st May 2014
It was agreed that these should be APPROVED and signed as a correct record.
3. Brief update from Secretary – Jessica Milln (JM)
(Progress and developments in the Chamber since 21st of May 2014).
1. Parking
Parking charges is always a contentious issue.
Mike Stanford (MS) has been very thorough in researching the parking charges in the town and comparing them with other towns across the county. He has come up with some practical solutions to make less expensive parking charges tat will in turn to encourage more frequent and longer visits to the town, but without decreasing the revenue in the Council owned car parks.
His research has found that where it’s fairly cheap to park for up 2hrs in St. Austell. Longer stays of 3hrs and more it become much more expensive and this discourages longer stays. It is thought that the higher charges for longer stays may be a legacy from times when there was a higher demand for parking and less parking available. These higher charges would now seem counter- intuitive if the town is aiming to be a social, leisure and retail hub.
DH has emailed MS ‘recommendations to Chamber members in the morning of 21st May.
We would like to hear from Chamber members (and other business) on this topic, so we can put forward a comprehensive, and persuasive recommendation to Cornwall Council in due course. Please send to the secretary@staustellchamber.co.uk
2. Media
3. Business Survey
A new audit is urgently required to show the current mix and distribution of retail shops and businesses in the Town Centre in 2014.
We were advised to seek Bids involvement in the business survey and so that they might use the opportunity to include questions of their own that would further serve to inform the Bid management board.
We also tried to invite BID levy payers to become ‘associated members’ of the Chamber to be able to share in information, invite them to these type of meetings and be able to promote their businesses on our website.
Unfortunately, it seems that we were met with suspicion and resistance regarding working together on these initiatives, but is hasn’t been for lack of trying.
So we’ve decided to move ahead on collecting data for the Town Centre and hope that Town Centre businesses will be as cooperative as possible in get this survey out and the results back in.
The purpose of the business survey is that would show:
We really need volunteers who might offer to take just 10 surveys out to local businesses and collect them again after a day or two. If you could do this for me, please make yourself known and we will coordinate it so it is a handful of businesses each, perhaps within your own business sector, or within a certain street.
4. Gurkha Networking Events
Members were asked for a show of hands to find out who would be interested in attending these events. DH said it would be necessary for members to spread the word and encourage other businesses to come along if they were to be successful and to encourage numbers. If they proved to be popular, the Chamber would aim to have a Gurkha event every month.
DH proposed that the Chamber would trial every month for next 3 – 6 months starting from July (but missing Augsu). If they don’t prove to be popular, the event would be dropped to bi-monthly.
We will be having a Gurkha evening networking event with a £10 Nepalese buffet after the next Chamber meeting – 23rd July 2014 at 7pm.
4. New Constitution – David Halton
Current constitution has been considered complicated to read and needed modernising slightly. In particular to take into account the website and the method of taking payments for membership. The proposal for the new constitution was been email out to all members on 22nd June 2014. A 28-day consultation will now take place, so if members have any comments on the constitution please can they email the Chairman dave@staustellchamber.co.uk At next meeting The Chamber will be asked to vote this in as our new constitution and update the two old ones.
5. Junior Chamber progress update - Dave Weston
The Junior Chamber will be school children from the local feeder schools. At the moment this involves Penrice, Poltair and Fowey Schools The idea is to put on a project for the highflyers in these schools as an entrepreneurial project starting in September. School groups will begin working individually on an individual project that benefits three themes: Community, Businesses and Education. Meeting on Thursday 26th June with Young Enterprise (Lucie Robertson), Poltair, Fowey and St. Austell College Penrice to finalise the details of the project to start in September. Any businesses willing or able to offer support in the delivery of this project, or would like to further set up links for curriculum enhancement, enrichment, or mentor support from a business perspective then Mr Watson is very keen to make contact. This can be made directly to his email dwatson@penrice.org.uk
6. Breakfast Meeting 11th of July – Jacky Swain / Tony Cousins
Tony Cousins said there had been two trains of thought on how Breakfast meeting should be conducted. 1) One is as an informal event where anyone can turn up and does not have to be a member of the Chamber. 2) Mid Cornwall Business Group idea was about promoting your own business by each attendee standing up and talking for a minute about their business. Who they were and what they do and what help they need from other businesses in helping them to promote their business.
DH commented that he and JSw had attending the Cornwall Chamber breakfast meeting at the Eden Project that morning and it was very good and the ability to connect and meet new people was very good. DH urged that people might try and attend and hopefully numbers will be good for the first event on 11th July at 7.50am with the aim that it will be over quickly and everyone can get back to work.
7. Employment page on website - Tony Cousins (TC)
Two new pages have been added to the website.
Employment page: opportunity to use the Chamber site to promote vacancies in the area. TC is a recruitment consultant and would like to be able to post jobs on the website. The payback, TC also runs training courses, or one-day workshops for unemployed professionals to get back into work from a recruitment consultants point of view. Can offer this to members, for example if they need to cut back on their staff or downsize of their business and would offer to members free of charge a one-day workshop.
Property Page: members can log in and promote rooms or building they have to rent for businesses.
DH asks members if there should be rules or limits on the numbers of posts anyone should make. Richard Austin (RA) suggests a limit of 5 per member at any one time in the month but it must be relevant to that members’ business, and to expire after a month. This is FREE to members.
8. Members’ questions to the Chamber (AOB)
DH commented on the fact that plans for Old Vicarage Place were looking very positive and have been published in the paper and that he will be contacting the developers to ask if they will present to the Chamber at the appropriate time. Hope to keep the members of any news and developments in relation to these proposals.
Mark Lewis (ML) asks if there has been any update on the Town Framework Plan (TFP). Cllr Brown offered to come forward and update the Chamber.
Cllr Brown explained how he and Cllr French had attended a special chamber meting to explain the process of the TFP.
He said: “Following on from that the Chamber put together a very detailed and well-put together response. A number of people from the Chamber also attended one of the three exhibitions.
“Since then there has been a fairly lively debate from the steering group to, not to argue about the results, but to decide how to take the process on. Basically some of us were arguing that having generated so much public interest they couldn’t go away and shut themselves away again.
As a result, two things will happen:
“The next stage is that there will be a draft plan but what we want to do is to give members of the public and particularly the business sector further opportunities to influence the way that then plan develops.
“Two messages I would give to the business sector: if you want to continue to try and influence the plan is firstly give further evidence to the steering group and secondly come along and have your say at the community network meetings.”
10. Date of next Chamber meetingplus any other diary dates – David Halton
23rd July 2014, Barclays Bank, St. Austell – 5.45 pm
[Meeting ended at: 18.38]
