Tim Young, deputy leader of Colchester Council and councillor responsible for culture and regeneration, responds to criticism of the authority’s approach and commitment to tourism.

I wanted to respond and provide some facts and, hopefully, reassurance.

The council has an ambition for Colchester to make the most of our important heritage and contemporary offerings and encouraging visitors to come; staying longer and doing more.

This is an ambition we share with many partners and achieving it is down to the hard work and dedication of many, including our team at the VisitColchester Information Centre, at Hollytrees, who are responding well to the change in how visitors seek information, prior to and during their visit.

This year saw the latest generation of the VisitColchester.com website launched with new functionality for visitors.

The Visitor Information Centre served some 64,500 people over the last year and the website served well over 500,000 enquiries from around the world.

In addition, the Visitor Information Centre has a strong following on social media.

I rarely, if ever, get negative feedback about the team and the service they provide and the opening hours are evidence based, aimed at creating balance between cost effectiveness, given the reducing public finances, and times when the service is most in demand.

Following a 20-year programme of destination development in the face of economic turbulence and funding challenges, the benefits and changes are now becoming evident across Colchester.

There is real confidence the private and public sector are making significant investments in the tourism offering, as demonstrated below:

  • Places to stay - new accommodation is enabling Colchester to promote itself more confidently as a short-break destination. Examples include: the new Premier Inn in St Peter’s Street; plans for the George Hotel refurbishment; Greyfriars Hotel, Blue Ivy hotel. Other new hotels include Star Anglia in North Station road and a Holiday Inn Express at Langham.
  •  Things to do/investment - there has been massive investment in visitor attractions, including: £4.2million Castle redevelopment; Curzon Cinema investment (opening 2017); Christmas lights investment in 2015 of £120,000 for three years; hundreds of festivals and events, including the Roman River Festival, the two-day food festival, the International Slow Food festival and the Comedy Festival.

The Mercury Theatre £9million development plans; Williams & Griffin’s £38million expansion; the Big Screen in the Park; the charity SlideRider down North Hill; the Waiting Room community space with a comprehensive event programme, opened in 2013; relocating the market (April 2015); Light and Shade family Halloween event, Heritage Open Weekend, the recent Andy Warhol and Martin Parr exhibitions at Firstsite, which is, in itself, a visitor attraction.

  •  New places to eat - Hudsons Restaurant and Club; Bill’s Family Restaurant; the Church Street Tavern; Three Wise Monkeys; El Guaca; Pizza Express underwent a complete refurbishment in 2014; The Cells at the old magistrates’ court, Tymperleys at the former clock museum; Love Thy Burger; Aburi (a Japanese restaurant opened in September 2015 in Short Wyre Street); Piattos in Queen Street; Tysa Desserts & Coffee in the High Street; Carluccios Restaurant - in Williams & Griffin and, most recently Preto, in High Street, and a Taco Bell is in development in Head Street. Further restaurants are planned as part of the St Botolph’s regeneration.

Alongside supporting all the activities above, the council’s ambitions are to continue to improve the infrastructure through schemes such as the new road into town from the new Junction 28 off the A12, the Fixing the Link walking route from Colchester North train station to the town centre, the Priory Street car park upgrade, free town centre WiFi, the St Botolph’s regeneration; improvements to heritage information boards and lighting schemes, along with direct marketing of Colchester through activities such as the tourism video and the new generation of the VisitColchester.com website.

These changes are paying off. Visitor numbers to the borough, while they have broadly remained around the 5 million mark for many years, are increasing.

More significantly there is an increase in visitor spend over the years. Taking a five-year look at the direct spend, pure spend by visitors, figures look like this:

  • 1993 £63.1million
  • 1998 £147million
  • 2003 £175million
  • 2008 £200.3million
  • 2014 £245million

Of course tourism businesses will also be spending in the local supply chain so there is a much bigger impact of tourism on the local economy in this way.

It is good to see visitors are spending more in the local economy which means more jobs are being created and supported for local people.

It’s great to see so much commitment and investment in our impressive and wonderful borough.

The council’s aim is to enable, support and encourage this investment and change; we can and have achieved so much more collectively across the private and public sector.

As portfolio holder with responsibility in this area, I would love to be able to do much more and, of course, there is always more we could do. As ever, we have to balance the reducing budgets across lots of priorities.

Ask Philip Crummy (Colchester Archaeological Trust) what Colchester Council in general and I, in particular, have done to improve the Roman Circus Centre.

Firstsite’s upturn in fortunes is there for all to behold. Again I suggest you check with Sally Shaw about my support and contribution.

I am delighted however an additional £100,000 was agreed for this year and we have been using this for loads of additional promotional activity which includes the bus stop posters mentioned positively in the feedback given.

Colchester deserves to be in the Premier League of visitor destinations in England and that is where we are firmly placing it.

Editor’s note: When asked about the visitor spend figures, Mr Young said the article has been checked for accuracy and correctness and the numbers are spot-on there is no need to explain the calculation.