A Sydenham Traders Association

I was in the Alex tonight speaking to one of the locals who does a lot of work towards improving Penge. He mentioned that the traders association (I believe Sydenham does not have one - as mentioned in another thread) leads so much of the improvement citing a few key examples.

1. Penge will become a BID (Business in Development) area and the traders association/local businesses have led the project which will hope to raise £130,000 a year to contribute to things such as the publicity/image of Penge, street cleaning, increased parking/access as well as a whole host of other improvements. Some of this money will be through businesses paying a slight levy on their current expenses to go towards the fund, others from other sources such as fines for littering/parking (which will more likely be caught by increased CCTV/police patrols as one of the names improvements wanted by the community) - see here for the report: http://pengese20.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/PENGE_BID_FINAL_CONSULTATION_DOC_4P_A4-D5_WEB.pdf

2. Penge will be having some murals done a la Lionel Stanhope - They are largely/completely to be paid for by business owner contributions.

3. There is a Penge Food Assembly, which although seperate from the traders association does work off the premise of working closely with local businesses to private the best for the community in terms of income for traders and opportunity/improvement/choices for locals.

I don’t have any knowledge or time to attempt to do something about this, especially with the mural project, however it appears that something like a traders association could hugely benefit the community by working towards some of the concerns/wants raised by the public and make larger successes of newer things that the community want (perhaps and example may be the monthly market?) or community based ongoing activities rather than the already embedded long-standing successful events eg: Sydenham Arts. If traders are at the “frontline” of the high street, what it offers and how it looks (to some respect), surely there should be a way for them all to work together and make decisions (with community in mind of course) regarding some of the ongoing things people would like to see from our high street, some of which appear to be repeated regularly (eg: Christmas lights, street litter, use of the “pocket park” spaces)

Thoughts?! Actions?!?!?!

Yes, this would seem logical but when others have mentioned it on other forums, there usually follows a list of reasons it wil lneevr happen and as tedious a gathering of naysayers as you will ever find and comments suggesting the traders don’t see it as their responsibility, which i find hard ot beleive given there is potentially a very good business case…

But i never recall seeing a pos Sydenham t from an actual trader voicing their objection so i am not at al lsure i beleive all this pontification… I suppose the answer is to ask for some traders to tell us their thoughts as by definition those of us who are not local traders cannot be in the driving seat though i am sure the community would help if they asked. Any Sydenham traders on here? What do you think?

It may be worth looking at setting up a BID district for Sydenham.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/business-improvement-districts