To receive an update from Paul Roach, Windsor and Eton Town Centre Manager.

Paul Roach, Windsor and Eton Town Centre Manager, gave the Town Manager Update. Starting with the Footfall Count, he informed that the trend of the footfall decreasing at around August of each year (as a result of the end of summer holidays and return to schools) had remained unchanged in August 2023 and for the last four-to-five years. In spite of this, Windsor had seen a 6.5% increase in footfall in the same period in 2022. Since 31^st July 2023, Windsor Town Centre had over 655,000 visits, which was calculated from a footfall counter on Peascod Street.

 

Paul Roach informed that the Windsor Town Management Team was looking into a new scheme to monitor footfall across the whole of the Town Centre, which he hoped to present to the Forum in the future once the data going into the scheme had been updated. This would give a more accurate picture of movement around the Town Centre and shopping centres, in contrast to the original practice of a single counter on Peascod Street.

 

Car and coach parking in July 2023 were fairly static compared to the same period in 2022. Coach parking had seen a 23% increase compared to 2022 with much more tour groups returning.

 

Town Centre vacancy rates had decreased by 9.4% (compared to 9.8% when last reported). Windsor Town Centre did slightly better than the national average of 13.8%, though there were still areas of concern.

 

The recently vacated units in the last three months were:

·       Reem Gallery – which had opened up but then closed within three weeks.

·       New Look.

·       Penriver Design Ltd.

·       Top Print.

·       Barclays Bank

·       HSBC

 

Paul Roach informed that there was a new scheme called Banking Hubs, whereby all the banks came together and shared a space, usually through the post office service. There was consideration on whether this scheme could be applied in Windsor as there was a strict criterion, such as the number of cashpoints in the Town Centre. The Windsor Town Management Team were planning to investigate this further, though Paul Roach speculated that Windsor Town Centre may not fit the criteria due to not having the adequate number of cashpoints. He suggested to possibly relay an update on this to the Forum in the future.

 

Despite the closures of Barclays and HSBC, Nationwide Building Society were not planning to close their Windsor branch and instead they had made a national commitment to keep and support their local branches.

 

(Chris Joyce, Assistant Director of Infrastructure Sustainability and Economic Growth, entered the meeting virtually at 6:43pm)

 

Stores which had opened in the last three months were:

·       Delicious Faux.

·       Banana Tree.

·       Badiani Gelato.

·       Time Watch Repair.

·       Greggs – doing well with two-floor store, potentially their second largest unit in “this part of the world”, according to Paul Roach.

·       Rogue Tattoo.

·       Temptation Gifts.

·       Ti Chicken.

·       The Shambles.

·       YourHolidays.

 

There were new stores which were under development in the following vacant units:

·       The Halifax unit would be rented out by another provider in the near future with an agent from Halifax being interested in a unit.

·       The New Look unit would be taken over by Mango, a fashion retail.

·       The empty Top Shop unit had acquired some interest from providers.

·       The Valarie's Patisserie unit was under redevelopment before being rented out to a provider.

·       The Pyms and Brothers unit had acquired some interest.

·       The Corals unit had acquired some interest.

 

Overall, there had been some movement in a number of units with more interest coming in for other vacant units in the next few months. It was expected that many of these would open before the 2023 Christmas period. Paul Roach stated that while it was not 100% super positive, Windsor Town Centre was doing better than most town centres.

 

Since the Covid pandemic, there had been a large number of new agencies which came on board (in contrast to previously being one or two agents who solely dealt with retail units) which sought to rent out vacant units in the Town Centre. From this, the Town Management Team sought to contact all the agencies which managed the empty units. As it was uncertain who managed some of the retail units, an objective over the next couple of months was to identify the agents and the receive an update from them on the status of the unit, as well as inform them of providers who may be interested in being tenants to the empty unit and the types of offers wanted for the Town Centre.

 

Paul Roach also planned to create a Welcome Pack to provide information for new tenants arriving to the Town Centre. This would primarily include information and who to contact in regard to planning, licensing, permits and highways.

 

Sarah Walker, a resident, asked a couple of questions. Firstly, whether the footfall between residents and tourists were distinguished. Secondly, clarification on how commercial retail lettings and rates worked, as well as what impact the Borough could experience on reducing rates and encouraging more and better occupancy in Windsor and how this process worked.

 

Replying to the first question, Paul Roach stated that residential and tourist footfall could not be determined under the current measuring scheme. However, the new footfall measuring scheme, called Visitor Insights, would be able to monitor movement in the Town Centre via any devices with a GPS signal, such as mobile phones. It was also able to inform where the particular device came from. The Town Management Team had signed up to a three-year programme for Visitor Insights. They had been uploading the data in the last three months, namely adding every property in Windsor, Eton and Ascot town centres, so the Team could potentially identify people that enterted into different shops, how they moved around Windsor and where they came from based on the GPS signal.

 

Responding to the second question, Paul Roach answered that the Council did not set the rates but only collected them. It had limited powers around offering discounts, whereby the Borough used to offer a retail hardship discount for potential retailers for a unit if it was empty for more than 12 months as an incentive to rent it out. Paul Roach speculated that the Borough continued to run this discount offer but added he would need to double check this. He explained that the Town Management Team had an annual review with the Business Rates Team discuss the available offers.

 

Paul Roach stated that the Town Management Team always advised businesses to review their rates, particularly after the Covid pandemic, and many businesses discovered that they fell out of the business rates scheme because they were too small. From this, the Town Management Team encouraged businesses to receive professional advice and a valuation review of their property unit; particularly as many more larger property units were being split up into smaller units and therefore reducing the rateable value of the unit.

 

While stating that coach park usage increase by 23% year-on-year was positive, Jack Rankin, a resident and the Conservative Party parliamentary candidate for Windsor, commented that there was a perception in Windsor that there were inadequate dwell times for coach park users. He asked what could be done to increase dwell time to ensure it benefited Windsor more generally.

 

Paul Roach responded that the coach park usage was 1,400 users in August 2023, compared to around 1,100 users in August-September 2022. He stated that there had been a number of changes. For example, Windsor Castle opened only five days a week, being closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which had a significant impact on the Town Centre.

 

Paul Roach elaborated that Windsor Castle did a lot of work before the Covid pandemic around improving the experience of visitors, with some feedback stating that visitors felt as if they were being rushed and hassled, and that the Castle was not up to standard. As such, he explained, the Covid pandemic provided an opportunity for Windsor Castle to reform themselves; most notably a timed entry to avoid an over-capacity of visitors.

 

Regarding Windsor Coach Park, Paul Roach acknowledged that it required a refurbishment in terms of where and how people enter Windsor and how they get from the Coach Park to um the Town Centre. He stated that there had been some discussions to improve this, but there was much work to be done. He also informed that there was some work taking place on a tourism strategy for the next five years, which would highlight the various aspects of visitors (both local residents and out-of-town tourists). He stated that improving the local economy involved increasing the dwell time of visitors and thus encourage visitors to spend more time and money. Therefore, this involved a lot of place management and consideration of how Windsor looked and felt.

 

Anil Singh, a resident, expressed appreciation towards an organisation for providing a budget for the flowers on Park Street. Moving onto his question, he explained that many visitors parked their vehicles on Park Street due to its close proximately to the Town Centre. He highlighted that there had been vans (in contrast to coaches) parking at Park Street in the last few weeks. He asked if there was anything which could be done to improve this, stating that residents may have to wait to park their cars.

 

Regarding the first point, Paul Roach informed that the flower baskets for Park Street were provided by Windsor Town Partnership, an organisation which was funded by a number of businesses and supported by the Council. He also informed that it was agreed at around the end of July 2023 that there were some outstanding areas which required hanging baskets, and that funding was acquired to reinstate hanging baskets, such as in Park Street, Peascod Steet and Eton High Street.

 

Answering the second point, Paul Roach acknowledged the issue, stating that there had been a slight increase in legal parking on Park Street since the Covid pandemic and the end of lockdown as well as the works on Castle Hill. He stated that a number of parked vehicles were private hire vehicles. While parking wardens patrolled areas, he conceded that the drivers likely drove away when a warden was spotted and then returned once the warden was gone.

 

From Neil Waters, Parking Principal, Paul Roach explained that improvements were being planned for Park Street, namely to increase and improve the signage as well as identifying residential parking bays. On top of this, Paul Roach conveyed that he had done some investigations around some of the vehicles which were parking on Park Street, stating that some of the vehicles tended to be large, black Mercedes-Benz cars. He managed to identify two private tour operators and then written to them about the issue of parking by their drivers. Paul Roach stated that he would continue to communicate with the private tour operators on the behaviour of their drivers in hopes of at least reducing the issue.

 

Councillor W. Da Costa asked a series of questions. He first asked whether there had been any consultation or engagement with Windsor’s local businesses on what kept their businesses located in Windsor and how aspects in Windsor could be improved to increase their successes. He also asked whether these sorts of questions were also forwarded to agents, namely what they wanted when they moved into Windsor, and therefore make improvements based on the feedback. He followed up by asking whether the data set differentiated the different types of businesses operations (e.g., bars, clubs, restaurants, food stores, and department stores). Councillor W. Da Costa then asked whether the footfall could be differentiated between daytime, afternoon, evening and late night.

 

In terms of business survey work, Paul Roach replied that Windsor Yards shopping centre used to do an annual operators survey which went to all the retail business units in the Town Centre before 2019. It asked them how their stores were operated, confidence in the future and barriers for customers visiting their store. Paul Roach mentioned that there had been recent discussions in reintroducing this but more frequently (possibly every yearly quarter) to get a sense or a trend from the various businesses in the area. This could be linked, he suggested, with the survey from the Visitor Insights app (which would monitor footfall in and out of the Town Centre); from there, advice could be given to retailers on where the main footfall was.

 

Paul Roach then informed that the data sets included the different sectors, such as financial institutions, retailers, independent retailers, health stores, non-food stores, restaurants, pubs and clubs. From this, the Town Management Team was able to see roughly how many units in the Town Centre covered each business sector (with some units covering more than one). With the collected data, Paul Roach sought to provide the data on a more regular basis so that people could see how the Town Centre moved in terms of its different sectors. There was a large sector in terms of food and eateries as well as there being many non-food sectors.

 

Regarding the footfall, Paul Roach mentioned that he received reports which gave a timeline of the footfall which recorded the footfall from 12:00am to 11:59pm, and thus he was able to see the footfall during the daytime and night-time. The new system would show the same data of footfall movement at certain times.

 

(Councillor W. Da Costa left the meeting virtually at 7:39pm)

 

While thankful for Paul Roach’s work, Duncan Reed, a resident, commented that there was much emphasis on tourism in Windsor, opining that the development should be resident-based. He then asked why there was much focus on tourists and not so much on residents. Adding to the question, the Chair conveyed that she heard that many residents were visiting other towns and asked how they could be kept in Windsor.

 

Paul Roach replied that he used the term “visitor” to refer to both residents and out-of-town tourists. He then stated that the Covid pandemic and lockdown period highlighted that the importance of the visitor sector of the Town Centre, particularly as they had an international tourist window. He elaborated that it was important to maintain the visitor sector of Windsor and Eton Town Centres as it helped the local economy as well as the fact that many businesses moved into Windsor due to there being a mix of local, regional and international visitors.

 

In spite of this, Paul Roach added that this did not mean that here should not be any focus on residents. He believed that some issues which residents had raised around the Town Centre were equally shared with out-of-town tourists with most complaints coming from out-of-town tourists and some of them being similar to what residents had raised. From this, Paul Roach believed that focusing on the tourist sector meant residents were losing out but rather improve what Windsor had. He also informed that the tourism strategy would include investigating the needs of local residents.