Nestled amidst the rolling hills of Nottinghamshire, Newark-on-Trent is a charming market town steeped in history. From its majestic castle dating back to the 12th century to its bustling marketplace, Newark offers a unique blend of heritage and modern life. The town boasts a vibrant community of over 40,000 residents, making it a key economic and cultural hub in the region.
Seeking to revitalise the town centre and measure the impact of new initiatives, Newark and Sherwood District Council (NSDC) sought a powerful solution. For which, we went to market to explore possible solutions that would be able to provide insightful data on pedestrian movement, activity patterns as well as monitoring a new programme of events as part of the Towns fund.
This case study explores how NSDC successfully utilised Geo-Sense to gain valuable insights, optimise town centre operations, and ultimately enhance the visitor experience. Prior to implementing Geo-Sense, NSDC lacked a comprehensive understanding of footfall patterns and dwell times within the town centre. This made it difficult to accurately gauge the effectiveness of events and initiatives, hindering efforts to optimise the visitor experience.
The council opted for Geo-Sense, a sophisticated system that leverages strategically placed sensors to anonymously track pedestrian movement. This technology offered real-time footfall data for gaining insights into visitor numbers throughout the day as well as discovering popular routes and areas of interest, how many are new and repeat visitors and how long they spend in different areas of Newark. Predominantly, there was a big interest in monitoring a new programme of town centre events. Geo-Sense provides all of this and therefore was chosen as our solution.
Since implementing Geo-Sense, the council have witnessed its true value. After a year of comprehensive data collection, month-to-month trends can effectively be compared and deeper insights can be gained, into visitor behaviour. Beyond the useful monthly reports, the council delves deeper, extracting diverse data points from the platform to share with key stakeholders like the Cultural Heart Board, and commercial agents. This empowers informed decision-making across various departments and fosters collaboration for town centre development. Geo-Sense has proven instrumental in securing funding and demonstrating the success of initiatives like the Castle Gatehouse project and the neurodiversity umbrella project. We’re thrilled with the positive impact and the unexpected ways Geo-Sense has helped us transform Newark for the better.
Working with Proximity Futures has been a seamless experience. From the outset, the support team has been fantastic. They’re incredibly responsive and knowledgeable, always providing detailed answers and helping me understand any system quirks. Dan, in particular, has been great, quickly resolving any issues and guiding us through the expansion from five to ten sensors. Brendan was also a brilliant help, patiently guiding us through the expansion process.
Overall, our experience working with the Proximity Futures team has been exceptional. We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Proximity Futures to others!
