PRESENT:

Cllr Barry Moran	Cllr Gill Merry		Larry Sharps
David McGifford (CEC)	Keith Castree		Carol Williams
Sarah Ellershaw		Peter Firman		Cllr Carolyn Lowe
James Mason		Hazel Warr		Mandy Fazelynia

APOLOGIES:

Dot Flint		Dave Skeels		Jayne Firman

2. Sarah will be stepping down from her position as Vice Chair in September so we would really like someone who is passionate about helping Sandbach to shine to act as Vice Chair, with the view to becoming Chairman in March. Sarah would be happy to talk to prospective candidates. Larry has been looking at Sandbach as through a visitor’s eyes and feels that we don’t sell ourselves as a town enough. Hopefully the Town Guide and a Shop Local scheme would start to address this. We could turn the current negatives of high fuel prices and lack of consumers’ money to our advantage by encouraging people to shop local.

3. Keith reported £400 in bank account and 3 new members have joined. Welcome to Dave Skeels from Communical Reseller, James Mason from the Lower Chequer Inn and Alison Heler from AlsHomemade.

4. STAR members are being given first chance to take up a limited amount of space to advertise within a new Town Guide supported by Sandbach Town Council, Sandbach Partnership and CEC. The A5 full colour high quality guide aims to promote Sandbach to residents and visitors. It includes details of the town’s history and what we have to offer today and a directory of societies, clubs and organisations based in Sandbach. The guide will be totally free and distributed in June 2011 as follows:-

   	All Sandbach households		All Cheshire tourist information centres
   	Sandbach Estate Agents		Sandbach Shops (upon request)
   
      Advertising prices start from:	£250 for full page back cover
   					£200 full page inside front/back cover
   					£170 full page (internal page)
   					£90 half page (internal page)
   					£50 Quarter page (internal page)
   

   All STAR members should have received a separate email or hard copy (if no email address) by now with a form to be filled in and sent back to Keith Castree (if you haven’t and wish to advertise, please contact Keith at k [dot] castree [at] sky [dot] com The deadline for receiving artwork is 23rd May 2011.

5. Cllr Carolyn Lowe reported that only 5 firm bookings had been taken for the May 28th Craft Market so this has now been cancelled. The charge of £27 for the stall was felt to be too high so Carolyn has got John Leech (markets manager), to agree a price of £20 for the June and July craft markets. NuNu will run craft activities for children at the June market. Keith Castree is working on the music provision- it would be good to involve local schools in doing something as well.

6. Keith to email Graham Alcock to find out progress on Christmas lights. Carol has signed a letter written by Graham asking for donations towards the lights fund but as yet this does not seem to have been sent out. It was confirmed that the Town Council have been asked for a grant of £6000. Carol is to email Graham and Elsie Alcock saying that Keith Castree would be willing to sit upon their Lights committee.

7. Mandy Fazelynia from Love Local Life gave an interesting talk on the loyalty scheme that Cheshire East Council is looking to roll out over its 16 towns. Currently Disley, Middlewich, Poynton, Alsager and Congleton are looking at moving this forward. Macclesfield and Wilmslow have been taking part in the scheme for over 2 years. Love Local Life will become a not for profit organization with CEC developing and managing the website and data. The scheme promotes shopping locally in your town and is a marketing tool for independent businesses in that town. As there is such a lot of information to take in it was felt that a separate letter to members should be sent out to enable them to respond. It was agreed to carry out a feasibility study, which Hazel Warr will undertake, to be available for the first week in July. Or visit www.lovelocallife.co.uk for more information. At the next meeting David McGifford, who is Senior Regeneration Officer with CEC, will talk about the Benchmarking process that CEC has undertaken for each town and what it means to us; and the Framework document and how CEC can develop and deliver joint initiatives such as the “Shop Doctor”.

8. A.O.B. Hazel asked about whether there would be hanging baskets provided for businesses again this year. CEC should be distributing baskets to those who had them last year. Cllr Lowe said that from 2012 Sandbach Town council would be taking this on locally.

9. Next meeting ….Wednesday 8th June 2011. 5.30 p.m. at SECE