The Bishop Auckland Stronger Town Board met to review the implementation of their governance, receive updates on the town's regeneration projects, and discuss how to improve their communications strategy. The board agreed that they needed to share more meaningful content with the public and to work with the Bishop Auckland Strategic Advisory Panel to find out what items were most important to the people they represented. They also discussed the need for a new permanent chair to drive forward the next phase of the project.

Programme Updates

The board received updates on several projects:

• Bishop Gateway: Site investigations had been delayed due to bad weather, but design work was continuing.
• Artist Hub: The timeline had been impacted due to a subsidy control referral¹. Once this was completed, No. 43 would be activated, with artisan food suppliers and apprenticeships on the ground floor, and art classes on the upper floor.
• Market Place Hotel: The original plan for a limited service hotel had changed to a 58-bedroom, full-service hotel. The Auckland Project (TAP) were awaiting approval from Historic England on the façade, and planning approval was expected to be submitted in April.
• Durham Dales Gateway: The project was complete, but the gates were unable to be controlled due to a lack of power.
• South Church Enterprise Park: Planning consent required biodiversity net gain². Once this was achieved, planning consent would be activated, and contractors had been appointed to deliver the scheme.
• Springboard to Employment: Shaun Hope reported that McIntyres was progressing well, although it was taking longer to establish as they had missed the start of the academic year.

Communications Strategy

The board discussed how to improve their communications strategy. Julie Barnfather, Comms, Marketing & Design Strategic Mgr, advised that the council was responsible for the communications programme and had developed the B Bishop brand logo. She added that 14,650 copies of the newsletter were delivered to homes and businesses in the immediate area, but they were unable to gauge how many people were reading it.

Alan Boddy, Interim Chair, asked whether there was any statistical information regarding levels of engagement with social media. J Barnfather admitted that they were not getting a lot of engagement with the website content and encouraged partners to send content, as it was mostly received from council officers.

David Land, The Auckland Project (TAP), advised that there was a lot more going on than what had been publicised at TAP and this was a good time to share the information.

Councillor M Harker, Mayor, Bishop Auckland Town Council, asked whether traffic was driven to the website if content was updated. J Barnfather advised that they would share content on the council's social media, but it was only updated sporadically.

Sam Rushworth MP, advised that most correspondence was complaints that were escalated to him by constituents. In general, he considered that constituents were positive about the way the town centre was headed, however they had not factored in timescales and had issues regarding the length of time it was taking to complete projects. People had raised concerns about the amount of money which had been spent on the bus station.

The board agreed that it was important to share messages in between board meetings, as they were quarterly meetings and information could be out of date by the time of the meeting. Graham Wood, Economic Development Manager, DCC, suggested that they could have an online subgroup to receive and share new content with the board. S Hope suggested that the board agree an update at each meeting and confirmed that he would share updates via Bishop Auckland College. The Chair agreed that if the board shared regular content it would demonstrate transparency.

Governance Review

The board received an update regarding the governance review implementation plan.

Councillor Harker advised that he had treated the Governance Review Report as a confidential document and queried whether it was open to the public. G Wood advised that the report contained some confidential information including discussions with board members and therefore it could not be published in full. All recommendations had been approved by the board and minutes were published on the council's website.

Andrew Walker, Programme Manager, DCC, referred to the risks dashboard summary and confirmed that he and Nik Bryan were working together to consider how information was presented to at the next meeting. He had written to the board to ask for expressions of interest in a subgroup to improve communications and the first meeting was scheduled for 26 March 2025.

A Boddy advised that communications was discussed at the previous meeting and asked for the board to be briefed in terms of desired achievements. A Walker confirmed that they would also consider how to maximise partnership working to share key messages.

G Wood confirmed that the next agenda would include new Terms of Reference, Communications and a new permanent chair would be appointed to demonstrate that recommendations of the governance review had been implemented to drive forward the next phase.

S Hope queried whether Board Membership was under review to ensure they had the skill set required and noted that the completion date was this month. The Chair advised that this was being prioritised and in response to a further question, A Walker advised that there were some provisional meeting dates that were subject to the new chair's availability.

Other Business

Revd. Dr Chris Knights reported that the A688 pedestrian crossing at Sainsbury's was a real safety concern and Nick Bryan, Transport and Infrastructure Manager, DCC, confirmed that the appropriateness of the speed limit was to be investigated.

The board discussed the monitoring and evaluation return and D Land asked for an update regarding the project at Canny Hill which had previously been allocated quick wins funding. Councillor Harker advised that the money was still being held and it remained public money however G Wood confirmed that the £35k allocation had been used for technical studies, engineering loading studies and a safety review due to changing regulations regarding non-highway structures therefore most of the money had been spent.