Newhaven Enterprise Zone has put nearly £100,000 into 17 town centre shopfronts. Grants of up to £7,500 are still open, and you need £2,500 of your own to get one.

Seventeen businesses in Newhaven town centre have now had their shopfronts rebuilt or repainted with public money, at a total cost of nearly £100,000. Newhaven Enterprise Zone published the running total on Tuesday 1 September.

The money comes from the zone’s Town Centre Revitalisation Fund. It pays for new signage, lighting, fascia repairs, painting and guttering on commercial premises inside the Town Centre Enterprise Zone boundary.

The fund is still open, and the terms are specific. A business can get a maximum grant of £7,500. It has to put in at least 25% of the cost itself, on a project capped at £10,000. In practice that means finding £2,500 of your own money to unlock £7,500, a detail the zone sets out on its fund page rather than in the announcement.

Who has had the work done

The zone names the businesses whose projects have finished, and those still under way.

Completed most recently:

  • Pat’s Pizza
  • Newhaven Tap
  • The Viceroy
  • Bursa Kebab
  • Naomi’s Hair Salon

Completed last year:

  • South Coast Residential
  • Barwells Solicitors
  • Christopher Sarson Funeral Director
  • Newhaven Cards

In progress:

  • Newhaven Pet Foods
  • Old Bakery Building (Newall Properties)
  • Bodyhaven
  • Aforedable Golf

That is 13 named projects out of the 17 grants awarded. The zone does not name the other four.

What the zone says it has changed

Michelle Connors, programme manager at Newhaven Enterprise Zone, said the modernised shopfronts “reflect the drive and ambition of the people behind these businesses”. She added that the town centre should get busier still: “Newhaven continues to welcome development, and with the new health and wellbeing hub due to open in September, more people will be visiting the town centre.”

The zone also reports two effects it has not put numbers to. It says businesses that took a grant have reported a boost in trade, and that demand for commercial space in the town centre has risen. Jeremy Taylor, managing director of The Company Connector, the grant specialist running the scheme for the zone, said his firm had “had more businesses enquiring about vacant space in the high street”.

Neither claim is backed by a published figure, so treat both as the scheme’s own account of itself rather than as a measured result.

Mark Bursa, founder of Bursa Kebab on the High Street, which got a new shopfront and an illuminated sign, said customers “often tell us that it looks much more modern and welcoming”.

What it means for you

If you run a shop, café or office in Newhaven town centre, the fund is live and runs to 2028. You need to be an independent retailer, a landowner or a tenant inside the Town Centre Enterprise Zone boundary. Applications go through The Company Connector at jeremy.taylor@thecompanyconnector.com, and the zone asks for an expression of interest first.

Three things are worth knowing before you start.

  • You have to fund a quarter of it. There is no grant without your own £2,500.
  • The project has to be finished within 12 months, and you have to show the impact, the benefit to the town centre and value for money.
  • Some of the work needs planning consent and some does not. HNW Architects has written a design guide for the zone that sets out which changes need a decision from Lewes District Council first. Get that answer before you order the signage.

If you are a resident or a shopper, the practical point is timing. The town centre is about to get harder to move around: East Sussex Highways began its Denton Corner bus scheme on 1 September, working on the A259 Seaford Road, Mount Road, Avis Road and The Drove until the end of November, and the A259 between Newhaven and Peacehaven shuts overnight on 14 September.

You can also see who is trading now in our Lewes district business directory.

Sources