Pudsey: The town with its own lottery and currency to encourage people to shop local
There’s not many towns that can profess to have their own currency. But Pudsey can.
Each month, in the market town situated midway between Leeds and Bradford, numerous transactions are made not in British sterling - rather in Pudsey pounds.
Since a community initiative known as The Pudsey Lottery launched in 2020, around 70,000 Pudsey pounds have been spent in businesses in the town, helping to support the local high street.
“It’s so everything is kept within the Pudsey area,” explains Nigel Monaghan, Chairman of the scheme. “People buy local, spend at local businesses.”
The shop local campaign, managed through the Pudsey Business Network Forum, works by offering people the chance to buy Pudsey Lottery tickets from 30 businesses in the town. Around 1,200 tickets are sold on a typical month and a monthly draw is then held, with five winners receiving prizes paid in Pudsey pounds.
That money can be spent in around 100 participating businesses including a solicitors firm, a travel agent, an ironing service and a driving school, as well as shops, cafes and restaurants.
Those behind the lottery then give the businesses that value in real cash, collected through the lottery.
The money left over after covering the prizes and any costs is donated to good causes such as charities and community projects. To date, more than £6,200 has been paid out through the good causes pot.
The lottery draw also helps to publicise local businesses. It is held in conjunction with a different firm each month, with details given out about the business and what it offers during the live broadcast.
“Overall, we want people in the high street,” says Trish Smith, the brainchild behind the initiative, who also sits on Leeds City Council. “We want people to go and buy a ticket and then pass the butchers and think, ‘Oh, I’ll get something for tea’. We want them to bump into a friend and say, ‘Oh, come on. Let’s go and have a coffee’. We want them to take their children to the park and then come back and buy an ice cream or some sweets from one of our local shops. We want people in the town centre and surrounding areas, understanding what is there.”
The Pudsey Lottery is just one example in the region of community-led schemes set to support the high street.
Sixty miles away, in Whitby, Rebecca Denniff, with Flash Company Arts CIC is leading on a project to transform an historic part of the town into a vibrant Artisan Quarter.
Supported by funding from the Mayor of York and North Yorkshire’s Vibrant and Sustainable High Street Fund, Flash is working collaboratively with local people to tell the stories of the area, celebrate the character that makes it special and drive more footfall into Flowergate and the surrounding streets.
“There’s a cost of living crisis and we know that the declining high street isn’t reversible,” says Rebecca, Artistic Director at Flash. “It needs a re-imagination.”
“What we really need to tackle is convincing people that high streets are now leisure destinations more than they are shopping spaces,” she continues, “and how you achieve a beneficial blend of the two. That’s a hard message to people who really miss the shops that they loved so much and wish they could still go in.”
The Flowergate and Beyond: Whitby’s Artisan Quarter project is focusing on the area as a space for artists and independent businesses, with units suitable for start-ups, makers and creators.
“We’re going to have an incubator space that will be launched at the end of March,” Rebecca explains. “So businesses can for free come and test - Do I want to sell my wares in a commercial unit? Does that work for me?
“We are also creating an art exhibition where the art will be in the windows of the shops to encourage people to come and look in all of the shops that are here with a trail that guides them to different businesses…So it’s really gently stimulating interest in an area…
“We are hoping that events that happen on this side of the town can draw ever higher numbers. We’re also hoping that events that happen elsewhere in town can also see a flourishing of fringe events up on this side. And that can happen successfully. It happens with things like Whitby Folk Week. They use small venues on the upper west side of Whitby, in the Artisan Quarter. But we want to encourage other events that happen in the town.”
Rebecca hopes the scheme will be the beginning of a “step change” for Whitby, with a focus on creative practice going forward.
“Once this project has come to its conclusion, we’ll be looking at that as the run on. It’s like, okay, we’ve stimulated the high street a little bit. We’ve created more of a buzz and more interest in our area. Let’s see if we can find some big investors to come and be attracted to it and spend their money here and you know generate a new industry, which feels possible.We just need the right steps in place.”