Volunteers’ effort to help people Discover Ashbourne

HOURS of work by a group of volunteers has resulted in a new website for Ashbourne, aimed at helping residents and visitors to get involved with the town’s events and businesses.

The smart new Discover Ashbourne website is the latest product of a marketing and branding exercise by Ashbourne Town Team, and it is the result of a £7,000 investment by the group, which is setting out to make a series of improvements to benefit the community.

Paid for with a funding boost from Derbyshire County Council, and designed and compiled by a group of local volunteers who each brought unique skills to the project, the website acts as a first port of call for anyone planning a visit to the town, or for locals who want to find out more.

At the heart of the new pages is a huge directory of hundreds of businesses, which is being constantly updated and added to, with the aim of giving every business in the Ashbourne area a free listing.

Entries in the vast directory can be made more prominent through an annual subscription scheme, which it is hoped will eventually fund the ongoing cost of keeping the site live, expected to be around £11,000 per year.

Alongside businesses such as shops, cafes and trades, the directory also lists every postbox in the town, every defibrillator, and various points of interest.

The website also offers a calendar of events, a map of the streets, notes on its history and more information on the town team.

Ashbourne Town Team has been running for several years, and its volunteers are made up of local businessmen and women, along with retired professionals, all with the common goal of improving the town for businesses and residents.

The group invited business owners to an event on Monday evening, in the Green Man pub, to present some of their achievements and aspirations, and to officially launch the new website.

Among the speakers at the wellattended event was Derbyshire County Council’s deputy leader Simon Spencer, who was quizzed on progress of remodelling the town.

He presented the team with a design for a modified road layout, which the team has promised to study and compare to their own blueprint, drawn up by Ashbourne-based architect Darren Archer.

Councillor Spencer told the meeting a consultation was due to launch soon into what the town wanted to see happening to the road layout, including options for social distancing, the future of the one-way system in Compton, and other potential modifications to the road layout.

To find out more about entries on the Discover Ashbourne website, which can be found by visiting www. discoverashbourne.com email admin@ashbournetownteam. co.uk