This toolkit has been developed following One North East’s commission of research into “Market Town Distinctiveness” carried out by Miller Research (UK) Ltd which can be found in the IGNITE library.

The research identified a range of criteria that made market towns distinctive. To help you understand and benchmark your town centre, the toolkit provides you with a methodology to identify the quality and distinctiveness of your town. Once you are ready to survey your town centre, a collection of downloadable guidance notes will assist you to prepare for and organise the survey. The actual survey forms are available to download for latter completion on line. Once your survey is complete your data is ready for analysis and benchmarking.

These results will be converted into tools that can be used to formulate a plan of action to improve your town centre. The first group of results will give you comparators of the different elements that you are measuring. The second part of the results is formed as a scatter gram. This is a summation of all the data and places your market town on the graph of uniqueness and diversity. Towns close to the horizontal axis need to diversify the vitality and vibrancy of the environment and setting whilst towns close to the vertical axis need to diversify the retail offer.

These summary results are generated by giving these factors a weighted scoring. These weighted scoring charts provide a visual tool that shows the centre’s strengths and weaknesses in relation to its offer and character.  These charts can be compared with other market towns that are using this tool kit.

The over view of the toolkit structure is shown in the diagram below.