South Yorkshire Businesses Asked to Share Their Views On Local Town and City Centres

As part of a new poll being conducted by the three regional South Yorkshire Chambers of Commerce, businesses are being asked to share their views on what the priorities should be for their nearest town or city centre.

The latest iteration of the South Yorkshire Quarterly Economic Survey (QES) — which, every three months, covers a different theme or hot button issue —The Town and City Centre Survey is open from now until Monday 10^th June.

As always, this version of the QES has the usual, evergreen questions pertaining to things like: workforce levels; recruitment difficulties; and cost pressures. These sections are repeated each and every quarter in order to gauge overarching business confidence and to see if any developing trends or fluctuations can be observed.

This time around the specific focus is on civic centres.  Wherever they are based across South Yorkshire, respondents will have an opportunity to outline what they think needs to be improved in their local urban core and where further investment is needed.

Among other things, the survey will canvass their views on the cleanliness, safety, green spaces, retail offer and cultural scene of the nearest town or city centre, while also asking them to identify their top three priorities for making it a better place to do business. They will also be encouraged to highlight any examples (from around the country) of places that can serve as an inspiration for South Yorkshire and its ambitions.

Urging businesses to complete The Town and City Centre Survey, the three South Yorkshire Chambers (those being the respective networks for Doncaster, Sheffield and Barnsley & Rotherham) issued the following joint statement:

“By the very nature of what we do as networks, we are always interacting with businesses and, in the process, ask for their views on a myriad of topics. While there is a wide range of issues that concern our members, one thing that often comes up, totally unprompted, is the wellbeing and relative prosperity of the town and city centres we have here in South Yorkshire.

“We know that this is a matter close to the hearts of many local businesspeople, which is why we have decided to give them the opportunity for their voices to be heard through our new survey. We want to know how important the notion of civic pride is to them, where they believe there is room for improvement, what they’d like to see prioritised in terms of future investment, and if they consider a flourishing centre to be something that is key to their own ambitions.

“Equipped with these insights, we will then be able to gauge how great the appetite is amongst the business community for thriving city and town centres, and advocate for the changes they’d like to see.

“It’s imperative that we get as many different perspectives on this issue as possible, to ensure that we have authoritative data that’s truly representative of what businesses think. Indeed, the greater the response, the louder and more informative that collective voice is.”

Conducted by the three South Yorkshire Chambers, The Town and City Centre Survey is sponsored by the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) and ProAktive. It is also part of the nationwide Quarterly Economic Survey, which is itself the nation’s largest independent review of business sentiment.