A new project to bring more visitors to Halesworth to enjoy the many great things we have to offer and encourage them to spend more in the shops and cafes is an aim of the Town Council. The Connectivity Report commissioned from We Made That has given us many ideas which we will work on over the next few years but one of their suggestions is about to become reality. The Neighbourhood Plan gives the town council the following action - Halesworth Town Council, with partner organisations in the People and Places action group, to take a lead on setting up a design team, including professional input where necessary, to scope, propose and implement improvements to the signage and wayfinding for Halesworth. Consultation with businesses and residents will be essential.
When grants to support economic activity in town centres became available we applied for money to design a wayfinding strategy - information boards, maps, finger posts. We successfully obtained a grant to fund a professional survey and consultation. In June 2022, a steering group made up of people from Halesworth Town Council, East Suffolk Council, Halesworth Tourism Group, the Museum and the Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group, interviewed three signage companies. Streetwise was then appointed. You might be interested in their view of what good wayfinding can do in the article below.
Following on from the Neighbourhood Plan and the Public Consultation (as well as the widely published and regularly updated Four-Year Plan that fell out of that), the Town Council put together a budget in early 2023 to commission the Wayfinding Project and to identify suitable sources of funding. From the outset, this was a collaborative project, fully endorsed by Suffolk County and East Suffolk Councils, with the latter’s Grants Team providing invaluable support throughout.
The first step was to allocate £100,000 of Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) grants to the project, but (thanks to the hard work of councillors and staff alike) applications for several other grants followed, eventually bringing a further £44,835 (for example, from the last Government’s Levelling Up Fund and from East Suffolk Council). This budget covered the whole project from beginning to end, taking in the scoping exercise, the engagement (via completive tender) of Wayfinding expertise in Streetwise, the comprehensive and detailed tenders for both the hardware (the signs and information boards) and the artwork, the management of the tender processes and the completion of the project (once again, Streetwise).
Costs so far are £67,296, spread over the last 2 years, with a further £35,000 or so expected in the coming months as we head towards installation and completion. The benefits of engaging specialist expertise became very apparent in the tender processes, leading to lower than anticipated costs with no loss of quality. This has ensured that the Wayfinding project will come in well under budget, giving an opportunity to allocate surplus CIL funds to other much-needed projects in HTC’s Four-Year Plan.
As a result of all this, Halesworth is shortly to join an impressive list of historic towns and cities that have undergone Wayfinding projects - well and truly putting the town “on the map”.
https://www.streetwisesystems.com/news.php
https://www.streetwisesystems.com/project_edinburgh.php