Members boost

By Jim Mynard
BERWICK Village Chamber of Commerce aims to have its membership up to 100 by Christmas.
Chamber president Michael Hall told guests at a membership night in the Courthouse Restaurant last month that the chamber had lifted its membership from 42 to 96 during the past year.
He said the chamber was working hard to reach 100 members and that its main aim was to draw people into the village.
“The chamber of commerce is the voice of business in the village and the council accepts this.
“We aim to ensure that Berwick Village is always a place where people like to shop.
“To do this we need to conduct events, run a website, and have a profile in the press.”
Mr Hall said one major activity last year, the Grand Prix Festival, was very successful.
He said that while the outlook for the village was good there were issues to be dealt with such as car parking.
“The times for parking in the village are all wrong and we need at least 100 more car parking spaces.
“If we do not get the car parks people will not come to the shops.
“People should be able to easily access the village.
“We can measure our success by the number of press columns we get, hits on our website, and the number of people who visit our events.
“We had 14,000 people at the Grand Prix Festival and we aim to double that next year.
“If people come to the village and leave with a nice memory they will return.”
Mr Hall said work would soon start on a fabulous new streetscape for the village.
“We saw how popular the Pioneers Park was on opening day.
“We can have more of that in our beautiful village,” he said.