‘Case Study: Henfield, West Sussex

Henfield Community Partnership are improving the look of their village and visitor information to encourage visitors to come to the village, stay longer and learn more about what the village has to offer.

Need for the project

The Henfield Community Partnership was set up in July 2005 following the issue in December 2004 of the first Parish Action Plan. The Action Plan and further consultation with the community and local businesses identified the need to attract visitors to the village to help support local shops and businesses.

Henfield has seen the closure of a number of independent local shops in recent years and while the High Street remains a good option for local shopping, it is felt that additional visitors (particularly from places that can access Henfield by public transport) need to be attracted to keep local businesses working well. In response to a question in a recent survey of village opinion as part of preparing a new action plan, “would you like to see more people encouraged to visit the village”, 86% agreed.

Planning the Project

The tourism group of the community partnership worked hard to bring local businesses on board by holding a number of meeting and workshops and by attending business meetings. These workshops were used to collect views and ideas for ways to improve Henfield’s offer to visitors and to build support for the project.

Following this broad consultation phase over around 4 months, a smaller project group worked to plan the project, develop a budget and find funding. They have worked with Hidden Britain to produce a bid for funding to the South Downs Leader group. If funding is successful the group will complete these works within a year.

Project Outputs :

1. 3 High Street fingerposts
2. 2 new map and information boards to inform visitors of local attractions and encourage them into the village centre
3. Updated displays in existing mapboards
4. New visitor leaflet detailing Henfield’s facilities and attractions and describing some routes for walkers around the village.

Achievements of the Project:

Businesses engaged (10)
8 local businesses have been actively involved through attending project planning meetings and some of these have promised cash or in kind donations to the project fundraising effort (such as web design and hosting and use of land to place notice boards). Additionally the visitor group has made a great effort to inform and involved business by conducting an initial person to person visit to businesses on the High St to inform them about the project and invite them to meetings and by distributing the business questionnaire used as part of this evaluation.

No. of volunteers (est. 9)
Three volunteers have contributed consistently throughout to the planning and funding of the project, as mentioned above. Additional volunteers have contributed to project planning and Parish Council members have also worked together t=with the Community Partnership to ensure the project runs smoothly.

Skills & training
The project to date has not required any formal training, however those working on the project will have gained improved understanding of tourism, project funding and marketing to visitors.

Marketing support
Hidden Britain has created a Henfield page on Rural Ways and has worked with the village webmaster to improve visitor related information on the existing website, until the new visitor site is up and running.

For more on Henfield please view the destination page »

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