Rochdale Town Centre Best Business

The Rochdale Town Centre Business Awards, sponsored by Rochdale Borough Council, will be taking place next week at Rochdale Town Hall. Over the past few months, mystery customers have been visiting the business in our town centre. All businesses who were involved did so on a voluntary basis.

The reports and rankings have now been finalised and the short listed businesses have been informed. The winners will be the businesses who achieved the highest score on their ‘mystery visit’. This excludes the Best Bar None which is tested using intense assessment, and ‘Employee of the Year’ which is judged by readers of Rochdale Online and the Rochdale Observer.

The Rochdale Town Centre Business Awards are arranged by Rochdale Town Centre Management.

The final Award is:

BEST BUSINESS OVERALL

Official Sponsor of this Award is The Pride Partnership (LSP)

Abdul Hamied, Regeneration and Renewal Manager, said: “It’s a fantastic honour to sponsor this particular award. The borough’s LSP, the Pride Partnership has a vision, to create 'a thriving place where people want to live, work, visit and do business - a place in which we can all take pride'. Having businesses in the town which are regarded as beacons of best practice and examples of how to successfully serve the general public help to keep our town centres vibrant, alive and relevant , they help create our borough vision. This award both recognises the success of these businesses and says a special thank you for the commitment and efforts of all the people involved.”

The company used to carry out the ‘Mystery Customer Visits’ is based in South Manchester, thus many of the mystery customers had not visited our town previously. This allowed Town centre Management to guage their opinion of the town, from start to finish, including the environment, transport and town centre pride, as well as the shops, restaurants and bars.

Each customer filled in a report on each of the 110 businesses involved, but also had to answer questions on the way there, such as if they felt safe, if the car parking facilities were sufficient and if the town was tidy. The results of these questionnaires will be published after the ceremony. Mystery customers also took taxi and bus rides and assessed the service they received there too.

Over the past week, readers have been voting for Rochdale town centre’s Employee of the Year 2009, sponsored by Rochdale Online:

• www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/competitions/special-features

Voting will close on Wednesday 2 September.