City Centre Stakeholder Meeting held at Lagan Valley Island

Lisburn City Centre stakeholders held their first meeting of 2017.  Local traders, partner organisations, statutory agencies and Elected Members of Council met to discuss the economic performance of Lisburn City Centre, the planning of new events and initiatives that will take place over the coming months.  Attendees received an update on the extensive research work currently being carried out into the socio economic profile City Centre users; results from the recent City Centre Christmas Marketing Campaign.  Everyone was also provided with information on a new one-to-one mentoring and tailored support programme available for local businesses provided through the Council’s Business Solutions team.

 

The Chairman of the Council’s Development Committee, Councillor Uel Mackin, opened the proceedings and welcomed the large group of attendees.  He said: ‘In the past 12 months the Council’s City Centre Management Team have delivered a number of successful events and initiatives to draw people into the City Centre.  This work will continue throughout 2017, and through further stakeholder meetings will identify the projects that work well for the City Centre and continue to deliver in partnership with our City Centre Businesses. City Centre stakeholders were again informed of the Linkages Public Realm works and were assured they would be updated throughout the process.

 

Chief Executive, Dr Theresa Donaldson, attended the meeting and said: “These meetings, organised on a quarterly basis give the opportunity for everyone to feed into the process and bring forward suggestions on how we can continue to work together to improve our City Centre,  providing space for sharing views and ideas.  The Community Planning Partnership is represented by the PSNI, Libraries NI, SERC and the Department for Communities at the meetings which enables more discussion with the key stakeholders within the business community.

 

“The Council supports the City Centre through a variety of initiatives and events with the aim of strengthening partnerships between various stakeholders in order to increase footfall and thus trade.”

 

The next stakeholder meeting will take place in April 2017.