Critical to maintain positive attitude

It has been a year since my last column, and it appears that we now have a more promising year ahead of us. While the pandemic’s gloom has caused some heartbreaking moments in the Chichester community over the last two years, it’s the good ones that we should highlight and bring with us into what promises to be an exciting year for business in our beautiful city.

With West Street Deli (a new independent addition to our city) and national restaurant chain The Ivy starting work ready to open in the spring of this year, Chichester has had some exciting developments in recent months.

Alongside these new faces, we see some old ones continue their reign within the city.

New Look continues to thrive in its new location in East Street with Sports Direct taking over its previous space as a bigger facility for the company.

As we slowly unravel from what has been a tough time for us all on a personal level and as a country, things are starting to look up once and for all.

We are already starting to see vacant shops filled, and the eye-sore wood boarding covering windows start to decline.

These are hugely positive signs for our city, which is heading in the right direction for an exciting year ahead.

It’s also been great to see the high streets starting to look fuller.

The days of walking in a straight line are gone and once again we are weaving in and out of spaces just to try and get to our next shop.

This emphasises that now, more than ever, we are determined to show the many businesses across Chichester that as a community we want to support them as much as we can.

As a local business owner, I understand how essential community support is, and it’s critical that we maintain this positive attitude in order to see Chichester’s businesses thrive once more, as they did before the devastating pandemic struck.