CLIENT: Norwich City Council 

PROJECT: City Centre After Dark Evidence Review

Norwich at night.jpg

What were MAKE asked to do?

Norwich City Council was seeking to be recognized as a Purple Flag city, the best practice scheme for managing the evening and night-time economy. The city asked MAKE to analyse how the policies and plans developed by the council, police, transport authorities, business sector and regional partners were working (or not) to create a seamless experience between day and night for Norwich. 

How did MAKE do it?

  • We reviewed over 30 local policies which impact on how the evening and night-time economy operates. This included appraising against (the ‘MAKE Model’) the city’s licensing policy, the local plan, its cultural strategy, heritage guidance, urban design guide and economic development plan as well as the region’s destination marketing strategy, community engagement strategy, business improvement district plan and the strategy for evening and late night transport across East Anglia.

  • We identified over 20 areas where the city’s policies, either individually or collectively, were nothelping to create a vibrant and sustainable night-time economy.

  • In particular, we identified areas where the city’s policies were failing to animate the 5pm to 8pm time frame.

  • However, there was a lot of good work too! We identified areas of best practice that even the city didn’t know it was excelling in and from which others could learn.

What happened next?

The city took our report and fed it into a revision of key policies and plans to make them more ‘night-time friendly’. The city also created a ‘Twilight Animation Plan’ to address the exodus of office workers after 5pm and to retain them to shop, eat and visit cultural attractions in the city during the week. This plan included developing cross-promotional campaigns between businesses to create a cohesive evening offer that was ‘greater than the sum of its parts’.

What unique value did MAKE bring to this project?

Because MAKE are the only consultants who can bring together everyaspect of planning and managing cities at night, we were able to appraise each area of policy with the expertise of specialists in separate disciplines, such as urban design, destination marketing, licensing or transport.