What is the answer to all the empty shops that are appearing again in the town centre? Do you have any ideas what we should do to fill them. Put your ideas here & we will contact the relevant authorities or owners. Do you want to open a shop in Frome? Get in touch.

Shepton Mallet lost its way for a while, but the shop windows (even the unoccupied ones) are being filled and it just looks so much better. We should be taking a leaf out of their book really (shame we can't have our own TV series too though)

I think it is really interesting that the main area of empty shops is the 'core', the strip between Iceland and Shoe Zone. To me these are probably the least desirable units. . The footfall on the pavement along here is high and judging by the lack of available parking spaces in the car park on a saturday there is no shortage of people in town.
What are all the people doing? One clue is in the number of cafes that have sprung up all over the centre of Frome, particularly the Catherine Hill area. In fact Catherine Hill seems to be booming. I remember a time when most of the shops in Catherine Hill were boarded up and the Council had to inject a load of money and grants to regenerate this area. Even Bath Street is now nearly 100% occupied.
The clear pattern is that shopping in Frome has changed, not necessarily for the better but it's doing much better than all the poor clone towns with no character. The number of independent retailers in Frome is quite amazing. So the answer to how to fill these empty units is to give people what they want!! But please - no more Sweet shops, Card shops, Charity shops, Estate Agents or Cafes, lets have some interesting independant retailers...

On parking - Mendip District Council own virtually all the car parks. They bring in a substantial income to the DC, around £330,000 pa last time I looked. It's unlikely that they would sell them to the Town Council I think. Though the Town Council are hoping to buy the C&G and some of the adjacent car park. See http://tinyurl.com/3x95rfz

Go on, I'm sure you need to let off steam :)

Something is happening. In August Frome Chamber of Commerce asked Mendip District Council to look at the Shopjacket scheme that has been running in Bridgwater. Frome Town Council and Mendip District Council have been investigating that and have had meetings with them. I raised this with the East Mendip Community Partnership recently, and it was discussed at the Planning Committee of Frome Town Council on 26th November.
I'm hopeful something will be up and running in the New Year.
In the meantime there are lots of rumours about some of the empty shops in the Market Place being let or about to be so maybe Frome will solve it's own problems again.