Browsing 'Local Economy'
New Morrisons “open by Christmas 2014”
(Photo: https://www.facebook.com/IFeakingLoveScience)
“Morrisons supermarket hopes to be trading by Christmas 2014,” says Oswestry’s new mayor. “This will create a huge interest in Oswestry and, hopefully, an increase in local employment.”
As he took office on Monday, Chris Schofield signalled that Oswestry’s economy will be the dominant ...
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Business Club Awards 2103
There were nine listed categories at the second Oswestry and Chronicle Business Club Awards with the 2013 winners receiving their awards at a hugely popular dinner attended by well over 200 at the Lion Quays on Wed 1st May. When Chronicle editor Graham Breeze made an additional personal award to Martin Anderson, the chair of the Chamber of Commerce from 2011 ...
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Art house cinemas are profitable and desirable
As today's news points out art house cinemas that specialise in independent and foreign produced films are very profitable. Cineworld the company that is about to develop the mutliplex on the Smithfield site have just acquired Picturehouse for £47 Million. This deal has been referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission because it may mean higher ti ...
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Takeaway town
Photo: Takeaway on Lloyd Street takes shape.
In addition to the KFC and Starbucks about to reach completion at Oswestry’s ‘gateway’, and the McDonalds and Frankie and Benny’s planned for the cattle market site, three new takeaways are in the pipeline in town.
The old Martin’s store on Lloyd Street is fast being converted into a chip shop.
...
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Figures indicate 12% decline in town centre
The number of cars using Oswestry’s town council car parks declined by 6 percent last year, according to figures to be presented to the town council tonight.
This brings the total fall since the pre-financial crisis peak to 11.8 percent.
In other words, one eighth of the car parks’ trade has evaporated since the 2008-2009 financial year.
Without ...
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The case of the missing supermarket……….
In the conspicuous and continued absence of a trumpeting fanfare and a cut out 'n keep Tizer Special full of pics of the mayor decorously cutting the first sod, there is an interesting piece in the current Private Eye, featuring the community of Dorridge, nr Solihull. Over the last 5 years, Sainsbury's bought up a shopping centre, an adjacent row of shops ...
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Cambrian Christmas No Turkey
In mid-December 2012, the Executive of Cambrian Heritage Railways (CHR) thanked the Town Council for including the illuminated train with ‘moving wheels and steam’ in the new Christmas lights and siting it close to the Station Yard on Oswald’s Road.
That was before it became apparent that the Railway was in for a bumper number of visitors for it ...
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Board of the Rings
(Photo of Bailey Head market 1944: Imperial War Museum. Non commercial licence)
New light has been thrown on the work of Oswestry’s Joint Economic Board, with the publication of an edited account of its latest meeting on Oswestry Town Council’s website.
The Board’s meetings are private and unannounced. Its aims and terms of reference have not b ...
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Letter from 2023
Image: Banksy.
February 2023
Oswestry did not always suffer the problems of prosperity.
But the town’s growing success has driven up retail rents to a degree that makes it difficult for new businesses to gain a foothold. Parking is difficult, especially near Waitrose and Next. Everything is expensive.
Does this make us happy? Or were we really more ...
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2020 how Oswestry lost out on 10% of its CIL
Cash incentives for development
Many of you will have heard Planning Minister Nick Boles announce that communities which tackle housing shortages by allowing new development will receive cash bonuses from the Community Infrastructure Levy. This is a new levy which local authorities in England and Wales can choose to charge on new developments in ...
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Oswestry’s ‘Project Group’ launches new products.
The Project Group, Oswestry’s award winning creative social enterprise, has launched a range of retail products under the banner ‘Designs in Mind’. The group had been invited to take part in the Eureka Project, a ‘Design Nation’ initiative that encourages British manufacturers and retailers to commission British designs.
To start this project ...
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Cricket club in line for £52,000 of public money
Oswestry Cricket Club is to be offered £45,000 of public money to build an extension so that it can accommodate more weddings, receptions and other functions, which will generate income for the club.
The planned building work will cost £79,000. £45,000 has been awarded in principle by Oswestry’s Joint Economic Board, a joint committee set up by the T ...
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Pounds and vision
Readers of the press might be surprised to find that Oswestry is due a windfall of £20 million “over the next decade.”
In truth, new sources of funding will be coming to Oswestry - much, it appears, to the Town Council. But nobody knows how much they will actually yield.
A sum – we have not been told how much – will come from the supermarket t ...
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Oswestry’s state of appleness!
Apple images are springing up in shops, cafes and businesses around town as Oswestry gets ready for its first small, but perfectly formed, Apple Day on October 20.
A section of the Bailey Head market will be dedicated to all things apple, from apple fairytales and apple pies to apple juicing and local apple growing which has seen the creation of Oswestry ...
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In the loop
(Photo: Michael Beckwith. Some rights reserved)
The Portas project never really seemed like a practical proposition.
The idea that you would be singled out by a TV celebrity, who would descend with a fat chequebook to sprinkle stardust over your town centre, is more the stuff of reality shows - the Secret Millionaire, perhaps - than ...
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Upstairs Downstairs – Bucking the trend!
‘Upstairs Downstairs’, Oswestry’s specialist cookshop is expanding into the vacant premises next door to their Leg Street shop.
Part of the existing shop is being converted into a fully functioning working kitchen with an Aga range cooker, which has already been installed. Cooking demonstrations and classes will take place here to make ‘ ...
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It’s complicated
Who is responsible for the former Be-Wise store, at 16 Cross Street?
Its front window was smashed long ago, and has not been repaired. Footfall, a community group working to keep our town centre attractive, boarded it up. They have cleaned the frontage on several occasions.
Estate agents – in this case Samuel Wood’s Sh ...
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Shire Hall in hyperactive mode
Local responses to the dire financial and economic situation are coming thick and fast.
Headlines will no doubt be made by the £80,000 salary offered to the managing director, currently being sought, of ip&e, the new company Shropshire Council is setting up in the hope of transforming the way its services are run. If you ...
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Escaping Tumbleweed Alley
Mary Portas does not address the real problems of town centres, according to a new report.
Written by big commercial property consultancy GVA, the report dismisses the Portas recommendations, although “sensible,” as merely palliative care rather than the cure ailing town centres like Oswestry’s need.
It identifies ...
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