Bedworth stakeholders turn out in force for town centre meeting

Partnership working is key to developing a better Bedworth town centre, a meeting held in the town by the High Streets Task Force (HSTF) was told.

The meeting, addressed by HSTF expert Sonia Cubrilo, drew a large attendance of businesses and other stakeholders which underlined the passion and commitment within Bedworth to safeguarding and improving the town centre.

The objective is how best to harness that passion and commitment and move forward with a plan and, most importantly, action to help the town achieve its potential and tackle the challenges it faces.

The three main themes of the meeting were: Building wider ownership of Bedworth Town Centre; How to work together for the betterment of the town; Identifying champions to be place leads and develop an initial road map to next steps to result in a focused partnership.

Bedworth town centre is blessed with some wonderful buildings, not least glorious All Saints Church where the meeting was held, and that is a great platform to build a future vision for the town, the meeting heard.  

Crucially, that vision will be supported by investment. Bedworth has secured £20 million Levelling Up Funding from the UK Government while Nuneaton & Bedworth Borough Council has approved £700,000 to upgrade Bedworth’s Market.

Warwickshire County Council was well represented at the meeting. In line with its Strategic Economic Plan, recently agreed by cabinet, WCC will always look to support Bedworth and all its towns in working together and creating solutions as to how they make the most of the changing economic landscape. Warwickshire is blessed with many great places and WCC sees partnerships as key in increasing social capacity in all these area. 

At the meeting, Sonia Cubrilo explained how other town centres have been galvanised by partnership working. Bedworth already has a good foundation for the process as there are existing teams, groups and organisations working on specific aspects of the town. Sonia stressed that for Bedworth to really succeed, it needs to have a structure that draws all these strands together and coordinates action and delivery. To that end, a Partnership Board will now be appointed.

 The HSTF report published following the meeting pinpointed the next steps.

“Regenerating a town centre is a slow process and can take up to a number of years. However, having held a successful workshop with the various stakeholders, it is important to establish a Partnership Board and capitalise swiftly upon the willingness of all parties to move this work forward using the High Streets Task Force 4R’s framework – repositioning, reinventing, rebranding and restructuring. This will provide the structure and strategic approach that is needed to stimulate the renewal of Bedworth Town Centre.

“The primary focus going forward for Bedworth needs to be on developing actions that address the restructuring and reinventing priorities. Though work on rebranding and repositioning will be necessary, this can be worked on once a partnership has been set up to build wider ownership and capacity for delivery of the action plan for the town centre.”