Agenda item

The Neighbourhood Development Officer (North) presented the report as detailed in the agenda and provided an overview of the business support grant scheme, how it had come about and the work achieved to date. She explained briefly how some of the money had been spent so far and highlighted key elements of projects and research undertaken to date, and provided examples of media used in PR campaigns.

A social networking event and digital workshops had been organised and well attended. Visitor websites had also been reviewed and many required good quality media products to promote the area, so money had been used to commission video clips for businesses to use free of charge on their websites.

Looking to the future, she explained that plans included:

·         Review of the River Parrett Trail – the physical state, artwork and businesses associated with it. There were limited resources available and Cllr Raikes had offered to help read through some documents.

·         Organising another networking meeting

·         Themed articles for visitor type publications

·         Signposting opportunities and sharing information

·         Arranging sector specific workshops

During a short discussion members commended the work done and suggested some ideas for future work including more collaboration between services and businesses. Some members made reference to the media coverage of the floods and noted that should such an event occur again that more needed to be done to manage the media coverage to ensure accurate messages were conveyed. At the conclusion of discussion members were content to note the report and agree the priorities, as suggested, for the next stage of the support scheme.

Post meeting note: The video clips referred to can be viewed at: http://www.discoversouthsomerset.com/videos.aspx