Dunblane Development Trust - Local Business News

Community View - February 2004

Improving the Local Economy

The Local Economy Group of Dunblane Development Trust is progressing with activities to support local businesses, to provide more assistance for new start businesses in the town and to attract more visitors. The current activities are being grouped under the four priority action headings within the Dunblane Community Action Plan and the current status can be summarised as follows.

Creating a thriving High Street – a start has been made to encourage existing High Street businesses to join in with what will be a series of activities to encourage shoppers. Activities by others in the Trust on such matters as parking, environmental improvements, tourism development and supporting businesses are important factors in developing trade, so we will support these activities where we can and feed the views of the traders into the various plans for further actions. In addition we will be revisiting the subject of High Street upgrading – the first phase was completed in 2002 and there are plans lying dormant for a phase 2.

Developing Enterprise Locally – We have made contact with key personnel in Scottish Enterprise Forth Valley and Stirling Enterprise and we have had initial meetings on such initiatives as the Gateway programme which is designed to help small businesses grow successfully. In conjunction with developing our contacts with potential providers of assistance, we need to make contact with existing and new start businesses across the whole of Dunblane. If you have a need or a problem, let us know. We are here to help if we can, not interfere.

Growing the Business Parks – We await the outcome of the recent Local Plan Public Inquiry to see if the area at Barbush is to remain as land designated for commercial development. If it is, we will be trying to find suitable businesses that could be interested in being located here. In the meantime, we will investigate whether any businesses on the Duckburn estate are potential candidates for assistance under the Developing Enterprise activities.

Developing Tourism – One of the members of the existing Tourism Group within the town has joined this Group and this will enable their ideas and needs to be considered by the Local Economy Group. We will support their work where we can and maximise opportunities for the local economy as a whole from increased tourism.

One of the core activities of the Development Trust is to develop a single, attractive, useful, up-to-date web-site for Dunblane. Although this is not part of the direct remit of this Group, the website will, amongst other things, contain a business database and contain opportunities for advertising and marketing locally available goods and services. We are linking two existing websites so that accessing either of them will bring you to the one site entitled www.dunblaneweb.co.uk. The second site is www.dunblanecity.com and if you access this, you will automatically be transferred to dunblaneweb.

The Local Economy Group meets the third Thursday in every month at 7.30 p.m. in the back lounge of the Stirling Arms. Anyone interested in participating or simply listening to what is going on is welcome. You can also get more details by ringing 822281.

The Dunblane web has been set up to provide information and support for locals and visitors alike.

We are always looking to update and add any relevant information that the Dunblane community would benefit from being included in this site.

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