Welcome Back Fund for Ribble Valley

Ribble Valley Borough Council

Working with Ark Consultancy and Oneday as part of a multidisciplinary team we explored the medium-term impact of Covid-19 on the borough’s three main towns of Clitheroe, Whalley and Longridge in Lancashire.

Brief

To identify interventions in each town that would enable businesses to be more resilient and grow as Covid-19 reopening continued and shopping habits change.

The objectives of the project were to:

• develop longer term strategic action plans for the three towns
• engage stakeholders to understand emerging issues
• explore options for pilot projects to support the visitor economy
• identify options to make the retail areas more visually attractive

Results

A robust, action-orientated report was delivered which identified how positive change could be brought to each town. This also included:

• Town tours for all three towns with honest assessments submitted identifying where change was needed (and what was working well)
• Engagement across a three tier council structure (town, borough and county) and associated business and tourism groups
• Interviews with shoppers, on-street and conversations with business owners in the three towns
• A research review for regeneration related documents framing the towns development to date and future plans to provide context to our recommendations
• A report with borough-wide recommendations and actions plans for each town