Exciting times ahead for Nuneaton

Nuneaton was recently named as the town with the most growth potential in the UK for 2023. With investment pouring in, much of it levered by the Transforming Nuneaton programme driven by Warwickshire County Council and Nuneaton & Bedworth Borough Council, these are exciting times for the town as Jo Williams, Nuneaton born and bred and who owns Joco Gifts in the town centre, explains.

Like every town in the country, Nuneaton businesses have been through a really tough time. The last few years have been, and remain, a challenging period…but we are still standing and ready to move forward again. And there is some fantastic stuff in the pipeline for our town.

Nuneaton was recently named as having the biggest investment potential in the whole of the UK this year. That is an amazing accolade and big businesses around the UK and further afield will have taken note of it. They will be looking at us and thinking ‘should we get a part of this?’

To every potential investor in our wonderful town, I would say unequivocally, ‘Yes…come and get involved! Welcome!’

I've lived in Nuneaton all my life and have invested tens of thousands of pounds in my businesses here. I am really proud to be here and its great to see other’s recognising what we have to offer. 

There's going to be such a buzz around the town in the months and years ahead with all the planned redevelopment work and opportunities coming up. Not only for retail but with leisure facilities, office space and residential and with the college is moving into the town centre.

All this will leave us with a very different town centre, but that’s good. The buying and shopping habits of consumers have evolved and town centres have to evolve along with them. Covid changed things forever. It accelerated online shopping so many businesses, like us at Joco, set up online to expand our reach. We have to change and towns have to change.

We need residential development and entertainment to pull people in. The planned hotel at Grayson Place as part of the Transforming Nuneaton programme will be brilliant. I recently spoke to one big business based in the town and they said they are so pleased that the hotel is coming to the town centre because they could probably fill it with visitors every day. All those visitors will walk into town and use the shops and cafes. It’s a win-win!

I’ve heard some people in Nuneaton say, ‘what do we need a hotel for?’ Well, it’s not for Nuneaton people to stay in, is it? It’s for visitors and we want to attract as many of those as possible to boost the local economy. Not just visitors to our business but to the town for weddings and christenings.

At the moment, they have to stay out in the sticks and get taxis everywhere. We had visitors from Edinburgh who normally stay out of town and when they saw plans for the hotel they said, ‘this will be amazing.’ They can arrive at the train station, walk to the hotel and be in the town centre straight away to go shopping and to the cinema. It will just make the town that much more accessible.

We are very lucky to have councils which have been so supportive and done really well to get so much Government funding. That funding doesn’t just happen, it has to be applied for with a good business case put forward and the county and borough councils have done phenomenally well to get millions of pounds for the town.

With all the new housing developments, so many new people are coming to Nuneaton and we need to offer these people the warmest of welcomes. We need to tell them about all the great things about their new home town. It's easy to be negative and I do find it unbelievably frustrating that some people are so negative about their own town and area.

If you are a potential investor looking for a place to put a lot of money into, what would you think if you went online and saw people living in the place being all negative about it? If the people of Nuneaton are offering you reasons not to invest in Nuneaton, then why would you? I find that negativity absolutely bizarre.

Nuneaton has a vast number of independent businesses with a great range of products – and our wonderful town is about to get bigger and better! Let’s celebrate that!