AT Crewe Nub News we aim to support our community. We promote shops, businesses, charities, clubs and sports groups. We have been profiling some of these businesses and organisations as well as the personalities who do their best to help others in a feature called 'Up Close in Crewe'.

We caught up with Doug Kinsman, the Chairman of Crewe Town Board.

In January, Cheshire East Council will be submitting its bid for up to £25m of funding from the government's Towns Fund.

Ahead of that, the board – made up of representatives from the community, public, private and voluntary sectors – has been reaching out to communities and leaders across the town to gather project proposals for the bid and find out what outcomes people want to see.

These will feed into Crewe's Town Investment Plan, ready for the final submission of the bid for funding.

By day Doug works as operations director for Crewe-based SG World, which provides IT solutions for safety and visitor management.

Now the industry's chief's extra duties include finding solutions to drive forward Crewe's regeneration.

He believes Crewe "needs to grab this opportunity for funding with both hands".

Doug said: "Through the potential funding available from both the Future High Streets Fund and the Towns Fund, and using the Town Board as the catalyst, we can bring together the public, private and voluntary sectors to develop and deliver a Town Investment Plan to transform Crewe over the next 10 to 15 years – using and building on the foundations the council have been investing in.

"We have an opportunity to offer something different. Crewe is surrounded by market towns, and that is not what Crewe is. Our town was built by the hard work of generations of skilled manual labour, many of whom chose to stay in the town when they retired.

"We have a wealth of diversity to celebrate and we need to look forward to our next chapter, to gain pride in the town and create a clear vision that people can get involved in.

"Crewe Town Board is keen to deliver that vision and make Crewe the destination it deserves to be. We need to be bold, ambitious, creative, tenacious, and driven with our 10-year Town Investment Plan."

Doug volunteered to chair the board because he says "we need to put Crewe back on the map".

"We need to transform Crewe and we need to do it now, together," he said. "Successful regeneration is only truly successful when it is community-led and involves all the various elements that ultimately come together to form a thriving town.

"Because of that, we've made sure that the board includes representatives of the community and that we engage with the community as our plans for the town develop."

Doug moved to Crewe in 1996 and has raised his family here. He said they help to keep him "grounded" and that having a family "allows me to appreciate the challenges that face the younger generations locally whether that be educational, leisure, retail or employment".

He added: "What I would love to achieve out of this process, is for the young people of Crewe to choose to live here - too many of our young and talented people move away and don't come back."

Doug and the board are striving to make Crewe "a destination for people to want to live, work, socialise and shop in".

He said: "Crewe had a strong identity for decades, as a railway town and heavy manufacturing centre," he said. "Its fantastically located position makes it an ideal place for corporate headquarters. In fact, back in the 1960s, that is exactly what one American company did.

"They looked on the map, saw Crewe's location in the centre of England and its fantastic transport network and decided it was the ideal place for the UK headquarters. With HS2, we have even more reason to attract big businesses in.

"We must showcase a unified vision to attract investors, buoyed by our commitment and unwavering approach that gives the confidence and belief that Crewe knows where it is going and is on an upward track of growth and development."

While there are many who remain sceptical about the plans for Crewe and the town's future, Doug hopes Crewe's communities will do "what they do best" and come together.

"We can't let these opportunities slip through our fingers," he said. "We need to pull together and make it happen.

"There's an opportunity here for Crewe if people really get on board. I understand that people want to see action and real progress – but we have solid plans and a long-term vison for Crewe and we are working hard to drive this forward.

"We've already achieved so much in the town and with the reopening of the Market Hall in spring, demolition continuing at the Royal Arcade and many more projects either underway or in the pipeline, Crewe's future looks bright."

Crewe is one of 101 towns selected to put forward a bid for funding from the government's Towns Fund.

If successful, Crewe will be able to deliver a variety of capital projects to boost the town's long-term economic growth and development.

Priorities will include regeneration, planning and land-use; arts, culture and heritage; local transport; digital connectivity and skills and enterprise infrastructure.

Doug said: "We need to submit a high-quality bid that meets all of the government requirements, to make sure that we can achieve a Town Deal for Crewe.

"The current and future impact of Covid-19 has magnified this challenge, and the world will be very different, but the transformation of Crewe is worth doing well.

"It's not going to be easy, but people in Crewe have never shied away from hard graft. That resilience has never been more needed than now.

"Ultimately, the Town Board must drive the change that fundamentally has a positive impact on the community and the future that they can aspire to."

The board is also tasked with overseeing the delivery of other projects already in the pipeline, including the town centre's regeneration and HS2 hub station, to make sure they all match up with the vision for Crewe.

Doug said the projects are crucial to Crewe's future and need to be prepared for.

"We need to help people to get in and out of our town," insists Doug. "We need to get them into the town centre and use leisure activities. We have got to have restaurants, bars and shops – we have got to create that.

"Retail has been in decline for 10 years now. We need to look at mixed use, bringing people in during the evening as well as the day.

"It's about having a mixed use, having those independent businesses and artisan offerings."

More information about Crewe Town Board can be found here.