A survey of Frome town centre has found that Frome has a remarkably high rate of independent shops (72%) with an exceptionally low shop vacancy rate (2%).
The results come from a survey conducted by Frome Town Council last year and all the businesses who took part in the ‘business benchmarking’ were entered into a raffle as a thank you.
Millers in the Westway Centre was drawn and won a hamper (put together by Emporio la Strada). The hamper was gratefully received by the Millers team just before Christmas, and in true festive spirit, Millers will be donating the gift to a worthy cause.
Frome takes part in a national benchmarking process so that towns can be compared. To do it, all businesses in the town centre were visited in order to collect information about what they do, how many employees they have and what they need to grow.
Everything from what’s new on the high street to where visitors to the town had come from was noted, catalogued and compared with previous years to see how Frome is doing in comparison to other towns.
This process was also further developed during the summer by 12 more students from Frome College to give the town council an even richer picture of the make-up of businesses in the town and what they need for the future.
Councillor Jean Boulton said, ‘This benchmarking information helps us understand how to support the town’s businesses and provides a sense of how things are changing. We’d like to thank the Frome College students for their wonderful support with the project.”
If you’d like to find out more, and see how Frome fairs on a regional and national scale, contact Charlie Orr at orrc@frometowncouncil. gov.uk to get a copy of the latest report.
