Supporting town centre businesses through tough times

A new town centre business grants scheme is being introduced to provide businesses the opportunity to apply for funding support to bring empty premises back into use and enable improvements to their current properties.

Following on from the success of the Ashford Town Centre Support Grant (ATCSG) in 2021/22, Cabinet agreed last night, (Thursday 27 July), to use £140,000 of section 106 funding (from the Designer Outlet expansion) to deliver this grants scheme.

Proposed benefits include increased footfall, decreased vacancy rates, improved business resilience for successful applicants and positive news stories for the Ashford Town Centre.

The Ashford Town Centre Support Grants (ATCSG) opened from October to December 2021 and saw the council approve 23 grants totalling £87,819. Of these, 17 grants (£41,767) were Shop Improvement Grants and 6 (£46,052) were Empty Premises Grants.

These grants resulted in a total investment value of over £243,000, with all of the six shops brought back into use still trading and creating an estimated 10 new jobs in the town centre. Approximately 65 jobs were also supported through the Shop Improvement Grant.

The trial ATCSG allowed the council to test the concept of town centre grants with a budget of £100,000 overall to be spent within five months.

Success in numbers

The scheme was well-received and saw:

• Grants totalling nearly £90,000 being issued.
• 23 projects in the town centre benefitted.
• Over £155,000 of match funding invested. 
• Six empty units brought back into use.
• 10 new jobs created.

Importantly, all 23-businesses supported by the grant scheme continued to trade from their premises for at least 12 months after the grant was awarded.

Background

In response to the Coronavirus pandemic, the UK Government provided grant funding for councils to administer financial support to businesses.

One of these grant schemes was the Additional Restrictions Grant (ARG) (discretionary) introduced in November 2020 which allowed councils to provide support at their discretion to businesses under their jurisdiction.

In assessing how best to administer the remaining grant funding, officers investigated various options and assessed these mainly based on feasibility, deliverability and level of impact. The outcome was to provide grants to support investment and improvements to commercial premises in key areas of Ashford Town Centre.

The grant scheme was mainly funded by Central Government using Ashford’s remaining ARG funds of £79,773. Ashford Borough Council also committed a further £20,227 from the council’s reserves. This made the total budget for this grant scheme trial £100,000.

National challenges seen in Ashford

As of April 2023, Ashford town centre has a vacancy rate over 14%, which is above the national average of 11%. Higher vacancy rates in the town centre led to lower footfall, to lower turnover for businesses currently in the town and to higher levels of anti-social behaviour.

Whilst there could be legislation being introduced to tackle long-term vacant high street properties, action can be taken now to incentivise investment into these properties in Ashford. The proposed grant scheme will incentivise investment into empty premises as well as enable improvements to currently active properties that support the tenant businesses.

Council role in supporting businesses

The Town Centre Reset, approved by Cabinet in November 2022, considers what role the council can play to directly influence any ‘reset’ of the traditional town centre area so that it can remain relevant in the current economic climate. Town Centre Grants are a proven method to affect change directly and quickly to revitalise town centres and support the businesses trading there.

Cllr Heather Hayward, Portfolio Holder for Performance and Direction: “This report clearly shows the council’s commitment to tackling the issues that we see in Ashford Town Centre, particularly around empty shops. It shows that this type of grant scheme works and can work again to bring much needed improvements to active premises and fill empty properties too.

“The last grant scheme showed that £88,000 can lead to nearly £250,000 in investment, 75 jobs created or supported, additional Business Rates receipts and six newly filled premises.

“The proposed scheme can further these very positive outcomes at no additional cost to the council due to the funding by developer S106 monies. This is a great opportunity to tackle Ashford Town Centre’s vacancy rate, revitalise our town centre, support investment and job creation and support some energy efficiency measures, without impacting our core service delivery budget.”