Chippenham High Street looking brighter with new shops and restaurants

What he said .. again :-)

Chippenham needs to be known for something , and currently its known for having a town centre with awful low end shopping, and little else, and to be honest some pretty dreadful pubs in the High Street at least. It needs imagination to remodel the High street, with shops returning to a more traditional image in terms of signage and branding, the street markets need to be beefed up and focussed on food , Wiltshire has enormous strength in locally produced foods, and a lively market, that focussed on fresh foods, would attract weekend shoppers, and drive footfall for other stores in the centre. Further some work on the key events such as switching on Christmas lights, Bonfire NIght, and so on, and not having tacky "fun" fairs and burger vans but instead traditional stalls, christmas markets, choirs, locally produced food and drink stalls and crafts etc would attract ABC 1&2 shoppers who do leisure shopping, and want shopping to be a relaxed leisure activity , thumping music, burger vans, and so called "fun" fairs handing out tacky stuffed toys is not the way to reverse the current decline. People want to know why they should go there and currently they have no reason to. Its who you want low end shoppers of high end shoppers , need to decide and execute a strategy to deliver it.

I expect the councillors who approved superstores are long gone with a golden handshake to cock up some other town. Comparing Chippenham with Devizes or Marlborough and it just comes out looking like a dump with a range of naff shops. I don't think a waitrose and a couple of new restaurants are going to fix that.

What might fix it would be sort out the traffic mess, free parking.

What he said! I would also add that making the drop-in shopper pay a parking fee for their quick stop in town has had a documented effect on shop takings in town. I spoke to a number of shop managers immediately after the change and they said their takings had dropped in an almost perfect step the day it came in. I'd ask them if it stayed down, but I don't have to and in fact can't in many cases. Guess why.

I can only commend your optimism but I walked through the High street today ,and was struck by the all the low end shops in Chippenham , for such a prosperous area and a town that has has nearly doubled its population in ten years , its an awful shopping area. Further all the empty shop units struck me as very ominous, i bet the councillors who approved Sainsburys and Morrisons are reflecting on their choices now, growth at all costs has not been all gain for Chippenham has it.

Further the impressive buildings are covered in tacky plastic and vinyl corporate badges , make the shops clean the buildings and put up signage in keeping with the buildings architecture. NOTE Wilkinson as the worst offender.