Littlehampton.  Home to the new East Beach Café .  Well known for the quality of the beaches and popular harbour.  Location of one of the most stunning riverside developments to grace this corner of the country in recent years.  With all of this going on, what’s the need for a vision?

 

Commissioned by Littlehampton Town Centre Action Group, the Littlehampton Vision is both an ethos and a strategy to guide the town’s development up to the year 2020.  It aims to capitalise on all of the opportunities inherent within the town as well as guiding physical and perceptual regeneration of the area during the next decade and a bit. 

The Vision comes as a response to difficulties that the town has faced in recent years, as the national trend for seaside holidays has diminished, manufacturing levels have slumped and supermarkets have relocated.  By 2020, if current progress and the aims of the Vision are anything to go by, Littlehampton will once again be ‘des res’ for the discerning.

The Town Centre Action Group is made up of a range of public and private partners, all of whom have a burning passion to see Littlehampton back on the map.  Work had been going on for some seven years and, in that time, a large number of smaller projects ranging from a regular graffiti patrol to Christmas lighting, new street furniture, CCTV and the repaving of the High Street have been undertaken.  With progress running briskly, the partners decided that a longer lasting and more effective remedy was needed to continue the pace of change within the town and to capitalise on the momentum already created.  A team of Consultants were employed and ran a number of workshops at which local businesses, community groups, councils and others came together to give their views and ideas on how the town should look in the next 15 years.  After extensive work and consultation the Littlehampton Vision was finally put into draft form.

The Vision has certainly become a talking point and raised a few eyebrows amongst the people of the town. There has been some excellent feedback and the proposals to ‘make a real difference’ to Littlehampton have been wholeheartedly welcomed - by most!  There will always be those who wish to slow the pace of change, but, as business leaders will be aware, standing still can only lead to stagnation and a slow spiral of decline – and this is not for Littlehampton, where even the Town Council’s motto is ‘Progress’.

The overall stated aim of the Littlehampton Vision is

‘Building on the town’s distinctive character, Littlehampton will be a successful, competitive and connected town.  It will provide an attractive, vibrant place to live, work and visit with an excellent range of facilities for all ages and groups.’

But what does the Littlehampton Vision mean for local businesses? Here we take a brief look at some of the proposals in the Vision and what they might mean for the local business environment.

To do this, it’s helpful to set out a few background facts about Littlehampton.

The population of the town is 25,600 and is projected to grow between 3.5 and 4% by 2011.  During this period, household growth is also expected to grow by 12.4%.

Littlehampton has a greater proportion of young people under 24 than either  the West Sussex and Arun districts.  Naturally, this brings with it a unique set of both problems and opportunities for the area.

Manufacturing is an important sector in Littlehampton. However, the greatest number of people work in wholesale and retail activities.  At 19.4%, this is actually disproportionate to the sector unit values.  Amazingly only 4.2% work in hotels and restaurants – just think of how many eateries there are in the area (both seasonal and off-season) and this figure yet again seems disproportionate to the visible reality.

Those already familiar with the Vision will know that it is based around a number of Opportunity Areas.  These are the sites that have been identified as having major development potential in the longer term and each could have a wide range of different uses.  Below are three key examples of these areas and we will look at how they might affect the future employment snapshot of the town.

Railway Wharf

This area is highlighted for quality employment land since there is the opportunity to develop the site with mixed commercial and residential uses.  A range of flexible light industrial units adjacent to the Riverside Industrial Estate together with some smaller business park/high tech units could also be possible and bring some much needed high quality, modern facilities into the town.  There may also be the opportunity to create R&D facilities relating to the marine sector or incubator space to promote local entrepreneurship.  Entrepreneurship is essential to grow an economy (whether at town or district levels) and therefore it is vital to have locations for new SMEs to start out from.

What does this mean for Littlehampton?

The development potential at Railway Wharf will provide quality employment land and attract high value job opportunities to the town, as well as allowing companies that are currently here to grow and expand.  This will then attract a certain calibre of workers to the area and encourage local young people to increase their skill levels to compete in the newly vibrant local jobs market.  The combination of new job opportunities and wealth creation will ripple out into the community, providing benefits not just for the companies and workers, but for everyone in the town as its economic prosperity grows.

A new riverside walk and green spaces would open up areas that are currently inaccessible to the public and provide a fitting counterpoint to the new development by bringing nature into the urban jungle.

The creation of a range of residential accommodation, including both private and affordable accommodation, will help to bring additional ‘life’ into the town centre areas and provide space for the current population to grow into, as well as attracting new settlers to the town.

St. Martin’s Car Park

At the moment a humble car park, in the future, St Martin's could become mixed development with the opportunity for leisure, retail, residential, multi storey car parking and a new town square.  To aid the integration of this area into the rest of the town, Franciscan Way could be downgraded to improve the pedestrian and cyclist links.  This will help with the movement flow around the town as well as encouraging those visiting the traditional town centre to wander further afield.

Perhaps the greatest opportunity here is to provide new leisure facilities which have the potential to contribute significantly to the day time and night time economy of the town centre.  Additional retail space could be taken by a number of companies who are keen to locate in the town but are currently unable to find space that is suitable for their needs.  Taken together, the new retail and leisure offering will expand the traditional town centre and act as a magnet to the town.

What will the St Martin’s development bring?

It will upgrade the entire northern side of the High Street and provide a huge boost to both day and night time economies of the town as there will be additional reasons for people to visit Littlehampton and further reasons for them to linger and enjoy the new retail and leisure developments.  And the longer people stay in an area, the more they are likely to spend.

The development will also be a fantastic draw for new retailers to Littlehampton as it will provide more units appropriate to their needs.  And more retailers means wider employment opportunities – and the more people employed means more disposable income in the economy...  It’s a positive cycle of regeneration in the town.

New build accommodation would increase and diversify the population of the town centre by attracting young professionals, thereby creating an environment which will attract further private investment and make the town centre a more vibrant and welcoming place to visit.

Clifton Road

Currently dominated by Travis Perkins, the Clifton Road site forms a barrier between the key strategic locations of town centre, river and seafront.  However, it does provide an opportunity to create another mixed use, vibrant part of the town which will naturally strengthen the links between these strategic locations.  

The concept here is to create a retail and restaurant area with residential accommodation at higher level.  In addition, there is a further opportunity to create extra green space in the heart of the town and create an openness conducive to encouraging visitor movement and flow.  Continuation of the existing Boardwalk and the pedestrianisation of Pier Road could also help to continue the restaurant theme which currently and successfully dominates Pier Road.

It is important to remember that this is a Vision for Littlehampton.  There are no plans set in stone and still lots of room for change.  However, the Vision and the work that is going on to supplement it has already attracted interest in Littlehampton from significant national companies.  Sainsbury’s have recently signed the contracts for the former Somerfield site and Asda are keen to get in on the act as well.  We hope that this will continue and that by continued partnership working, great things will happen in our Town.

If you want any further information about the Vision and the opportunities it provides, please contact Miriam Nicholls on 01903 713436 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it