It’s time to talk about towns. Towns where most of us live, work, and raise our families. Towns where hard-working, local enterprises are delivering consistently for communities and incubating new ideas.
Despite the huge social and economic importance of our towns, we know they are often overlooked in favour of cities when it comes to national policy making. Our work – together with the Social Market Foundation and the British Retail Consortium – aims to change that.
In a first-of-its-kind report, we have leveraged Visa data insights to better understand the economic vitality of our towns and how it can be bolstered.
An analysis of more than 900 towns across five economic indicators – economic prosperity, people & skills, infrastructure, businesses environment and sustainability – found remarkable characteristics which would not only benefit local businesses and people, but also the whole UK economy.
We learned that towns are far from homogenous; there is no one-size-fits-all solution to unlocking growth; and that local solutions are key to future prosperity. It’s local people who need to have a say on their town’s future. It is the responsibility of service providers, such as Visa, to help facilitate this conversation.
That’s why, in partnership with the BRC, we’ve now launched Let’s Celebrate Towns, a nationwide competition celebrating the hundreds of towns helping local businesses and communities to thrive. It will share leading examples of how towns are adapting to new challenges and opportunities in a rapidly changing environment and will actively encourage the adoption of best practices across the nation.
Winning towns will receive a cash prize to help fund a local community initiative, as well as a learning and development package for local businesses. They will be selected by a panel of independent judges looking at a range of factors including business environment, infrastructure, people and skills, sustainability, and economic prosperity.
We’re committed to playing our part in realising the economic potential of our towns. Every day, we strive to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid. At the heart of all we do is delivering an innovative, reliable, and secure payments network for businesses and consumers, no matter where they are.
Let’s Celebrate Towns – part of our broader Talk of the Town initiative – is where the Visa mission and ambition for supporting local economies to prosper come together. We are doing this because we know that when towns do well, everyone can benefit.
This means more businesses on the high street, more jobs for local people, greater market access that contributes to home-grown growth, and more opportunities for communities to set up local initiatives that serve local people.
In the next phase of Talk of the Town, we will focus on convening businesses, policymakers and trade associations, to help understand the specific requirements for navigating the economic headwinds ahead and develop a policy roadmap for unlocking the potential of towns.