Trafford Council has stepped up its attempts to reduce the number of larger vacant units on George Street and Stamford New Road.
The council has doubled the size of its interest-free loans available to businesses wishing to take ground floor space on the two most important shopping streets in Altrincham town centre.
Eligible businesses can now receive a loan of £20,000, up from £10,000 previously. The original limit of £10,000 still applies for the rest of the town centre.
The move is intended to help revitalise two areas of the town that have become synonymous with vacant units in recent years.
Below: Hummingbird Flowers’ Siobhan Harkin (left) and Vintage Angel Design’s Pamela Macauley, who both used the loan scheme
That point was reinforced by research from The Local Data Company this week, which in 2010 infamously revealed that Altrincham had the most vacant shops in the UK.
Although the town didn’t feature in the UK’s top 10 towns overall for high vacancy rates, it did come second in the UK for medium-sized towns – towns with between 200 and 399 premises – with the worst vacancy rates.
The council will hope the improvement in its loan scheme terms can continue to reverse that trend.
Six new businesses have already used the scheme to open new shops: Bell’s Gym, Vintage Angel & Hummingbird Flowers, Shop4Supplements, Velo Espresso, Angela Quayle Interior Design and Bumkin Designer Kids.
Below: Shop4Supplements owner James Dobell, who also used the scheme when setting up
Councillor Michael Hyman, Executive Member for Economic Growth and Planning, said: “The Town Centres Loan Scheme has proved a big success in its first full year of operation, and we are seeing vacant units being snapped up with a great range of independent businesses.
“So far many of these have been in smaller units, so we wanted to extend the scheme to assist new businesses looking at some of the larger town centre units, where refurbishment costs are likely to be more substantial.
“We are optimistic that increasing the maximum loan to £20,000 will lead to more interest in the remaining vacant units in the key George Street and Stamford New Road areas.”
Pam Macauley of Vintage Angel, one of the businesses to use the scheme, said: “We couldn’t have opened our shop without the interest-free loan scheme. For us the process was quite involved as we are two businesses in one unit, but the good thing is we’ve now set a precedent for this model.
“For small complementary businesses like ours it made a lot of sense to share premises and reduce costs, and the loan scheme enabled us to do that.”
For more information about the town centre loan scheme, contact Altrincham Forward on 0161 912 1599 or email altrincham.forward@trafford.gov.uk.
