Digital + the High Street

Enabling our partners to engage with and lead key workstreams for the DIZ is a vital part of how the DIZ works and how we are able to achieve all that we do. Special Interest Groups (SIGs) allow partners to identify areas of specific digital challenge and opportunity and where they might have a particular focus or interest.

The DIZ Town Centres SIG was the first such group to be established and is led by officers and members from Broxbourne BC and Uttlesford DC. With all high streets facing a massive challenge to their survival from online retailing and changing shopper habits, as well as the ongoing and lasting impacts of the COIVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, the group are keen to explore what opportunities  might exist for digital technology and innovation to be a catalyst for the future prosperity of our high streets, supporting them to thrive.

Having conducted a baseline survey of all the DIZ high streets the group coordinated a procurement exercise across all five districts of the DIZ which resulted in a single footfall monitoring application being adapted. This will help the team and partners to better understand who is visiting their high streets, how, why and for how long. In turn, this insight will enable them to shape future interventions appropriate to each town centre.

The work programme of the group is looking at place-making apps and how they might be developed across the DIZ; what digital technology is used in our car parks and the opportunities they bring; and, whether localised online shopping apps can be adopted in such a way as to support high streets rather than threaten them.

For more information please contact Mike Warr at mwarr@eppingforestdc.gov.uk or on 01992 564472