Press Release

8 February 2024

Make Fareham Fun

Fareham Town Centre needs to work for all of Fareham’s residents. It needs to be an attractive, enjoyable, and safe location, particularly for young people and parents with young children. 

As part of Fareham Borough Council’s engagement to understand what local people, residents, businesses and visitors would like from their town centre, we are calling for imaginative, fun ideas on how you would change it. 

Supported by a special series of consultation events over half-term, the Council is asking residents for ideas that could be explored to improve the town centre, building on the feedback received from over 1,000 people last year. In addition, we are also interested in exploring how the town centre can provide more, and improved, multi-generational play and leisure facilities.

We are inviting ideas from everyone and are particularly keen to hear ideas from parents or carers of young children to help make Fareham more family friendly. The half-term events programme will run on the following days:

• Design your dream play – join us for a colouring workshop to design your dream play space, 10am-1pm on Saturday 10 February in Osborn Square (by the Softplay).
• Make Fareham Fun consultation – Take a look at some of the themes and ideas around what facilities could be improved or added to the town centre on Sunday 11 – Wednesday 14 February in the Ping-Pong Parlour, Fareham Shopping Centre

You can also share any ideas and, in particular, how play and leisure facilities could be improved in the town centre, by visiting www.fareham.gov.uk/farehamtowncentre.  Your ideas and feedback are requested by Wednesday 14 February; however we will continue to review any feedback received after this period.

Councillor Seán Woodward, Executive Leader of Fareham Borough Council, said:

“Town centre regeneration is one of our key priorities.  And, since we purchased Fareham Shopping Centre last Autumn, we have been working closely with our advisors at RivingtonHark to think holistically about what we can do to ensure local people and users of the town centre will continue to feel proud of what it has to offer. We have been overwhelmed by the levels of engagement to date, and have already received over 1,000 pieces of feedback since we launched our consultation in November.

“This has clearly shown how Fareham Town Centre is a family destination and we are looking forward to seeing what comes out of this next round of activity, as we drill down into how this can be improved going forward and capture the imaginative ideas that residents have.”

Five “Key Strategic Objectives” have been developed by assessing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the Town Centre, informed both by findings from public feedback at the end of 2023 and wider technical research. We are now in the process of reviewing these findings as we develop a regeneration strategy and action plan.

The five Key Strategic Objectives are: 
1)    Address connectivity issues.
2)    Consolidate retail and introduce new vibrant uses.
3)    Make the most of Fareham’s inherent qualities.
4)    Make the Town Centre more attractive.
5)    Create a unique selling point/points.

ENDS

For further information contact:

Customer Enquiries

Tel: 01329 236100
Email: customerservicecentre@fareham.gov.uk

Media Enquiries

The Communications Team
Tel: 01329 824310
Email: publicity@fareham.gov.uk
Fax: 01329 550576

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