Answers to Public Questions

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There were no Public Questions received in December 2024, January, February, March, April, May or June of 2025.

Public Questions and Answers - July 2025 Full Council:

Name: Catriona Harkin

For years when you searched "Ballymena" on Google, the very first results were drugs and sectarian violence.

This has now been replaced with the scenes which were broadcast internationally of violent riots.

What is the council going to do to improve the image of our town?

Answer:

Council through funding from the Department for Communities has rolled out a 3-month promotional campaign focusing on the excellent retail, hospitality and leisure offering of Ballymena.

The campaign includes radio, digital, outdoor and advertorial. Following the recent unrest Council worked with Ballymena BID the traders forum in the town to develop a high impact marketing campaign to positively reposition Ballymena town centre.

The campaign is split between social media and radio and is being delivered during July.

Well known actor Liam Neeson from Ballymena agreed to lead the radio promotion which is now live on Cool FM promoting Ballymena as an attractive place to visit, eat, shop and stay.

Additional promotion has been secured through Q Radio who are highlighting Ballymena for the month of July.

The radio station has run a free Roadshow in the Tower Centre and is supporting local businesses with airtime for promoting Ballymena as a place to shop and relax.

Council continues to promote the very best of Ballymena and showcase the town as a great shopping town with excellent visitor attractions, including parks and walks, world class events, great food, and an abundance of history and culture.

This is an ongoing strategic priority for Council.

Recently, Council have worked with the Gracehill Old School Trust to achieve the designation of Gracehill Moravian Village as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The next stage of this project is to develop pathways to manage visitor flow, this is at an advanced stage of planning and will present Gracehill as a world class visitor attraction.

Council continues to work collaboratively with tourism trade partners Tourism Northern Ireland and Tourism Ireland to review and improve signage and promotion of Slemish Mountain as a site of historical and cultural significance.

Council Officers work closely with shops and hospitality providers including the Ballymena BID, to ensure they are receiving the support they require to maximise their online presence, both on the Shaped by Sea and Stone tourism website and the Discover NI and Tourism NI sites.

Council’s Shaped by Sea and Stone tourism website showcases all the great things there are to see and do.

The site has gone from strength to strength since its launch in late 2018 and in the last 12 months has received 226,848 visitors.

Visitor numbers to the site are growing year on year at a significant level.

Research shows the impact this work is having with Visa spend data for ‘Out of State’ Visa spend (spend by people not from Northern Ireland) having increased significantly in Ballymena in the last 3 years, indicating an increase in out of state visitors to the area.

Name: Trevor Harkin

In the news this week of Antrim town getting another fast food restaurant, it really bring to light how little ballymena has in this area so my question is what is the mid and east council doing to promote more business like this to our town and why does other towns getting these over ballymena with the new st Patrick way they're opportunity to use this better rather than just a through road from one end of the town to the other.

Answer:

Ballymena has a fabulous hospitality offering with fine dining, cosy coffee retreats, fast food restaurants and bakeries.

A hospitality marketing campaign is ongoing including promotion on the waste vehicle fleet, digital screens and town entrance points.

Two new hospitality businesses have recently opened in Ballymena, Shot has opened in Ballymoney Street and Flax Coffee has opened on Bryan Street.

Council is pleased to be able to support the hospitality sector through shop front improvement grants, pavement café furniture grants and free bespoke mentoring.

The Department for Communities is leading on the regeneration of the former St Patrick’s Barracks site which is expected to deliver more than £160m investment through a comprehensive, mixed-use housing-led development. 

The Department funded the construction of the £7.5m St Patrick’s Link Road (“St Patrick’s Way”), which was managed by the Department for Infrastructure and completed in June 2023, which opens the site to the public and allows its full development potential to be realised. 

The Development Plan for the site is the roadmap for the flagship, shared, mixed use, housing-led regeneration scheme. The plan includes:

• residential homes;
• the i4C Innovation and CleanTech Centre;
• a leisure and wellbeing centre;
• a new civic space;
• links with the new neighbouring Northern Regional College campus;
• a new PSNI station;
• along with the provision of car parking, road infrastructure and foot and cycle paths.

More information in relation to the proposed redevelopment is available online: St Patrick's Regeneration | Department for Communities

Also you will be aware of the opening recently of the new Home Bargains store in Queen Street, and the significant £10M investment that has been attracted at the new Primark store in Fairhill, of which I have been informed will be only the second of their new format stores to open in the UK.