Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

The only free business banking long term is (as far as I am aware) is with the Cooperative bank to members of the Federation of Small Businesses. Actually not a bad service for the most part, the website has been upgraded recently and works well.

 

I am Treasurer for a Charity and we have free banking and don't get charged for paying in Cash or Cheques. We only have to pay a small fee for operating our card machine or receiving online payments. It does depend on your Bank though.

 

It also depends on the size of the organisation, and whether the bank see it as a charity or as a business. And banks are getting more and more restrictive.


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This is all fair comment generally, but getting back to the L&B I think the original point regarding the new 70p per transaction applied to website sales was that it was imposed in ADDITION to any transaction charges for banks and financial services thus adding to the cost of sales.

 

Are we sure that the number is accurate?

 

Which was where I queried the real impact of transaction costs, which will depend on a number of factors.

 

A couple of news articles on the new website, one of which concerns the website update. All very interesting and informative.

 

The L&B currently has a vacancy for an engineer/fitter at Woody Bay:
https://scontent-lcy1-1.xx.fbcdn.ne...nhUHOz1IaF-M2QJBwN0w25uMs-OxtuGDQ&oe=63D8459C

 

Two planning applications (discharge of conditions) approved by Exmoor National Park planning committee on 19th January:

Citizen Portal Planning (agileapplications.co.uk)
Citizen Portal Planning (agileapplications.co.uk)

Maybe not massive news, but hopefully showing that things are progressing positively.

 

https://planning.agileapplications.co.uk/exmoor/application-details/23680

https://planning.agileapplications.co.uk/exmoor/application-details/23687

 

I have just received my subscription copy of 'Trackside' Magazine which has an article on the Bluebell Railway which talks about it reviewing its '2024 off-peak operation to help offset huge energy cost increases' and the 'need to promote all our running days this year to ensure the trains are as close to full as we can get. This year is about maximising our load'. And there have been other articles on other lines, including the Festiniog, detailing the changes to cope with the results of the cost of living crisis. One on the Festiniog has demonstrated it's enhanced publicity to generate visitors with the income they bring.

'Steam Railway' lists Enthusiast Events for the year - the L & B is not listed. Is this another example of an unwillingness to communicate ?

 

This year's events have not been finalised yet. Once they are, which will be sooner rather than later, they will be well publicised as per our previous events. The team at Woody Bay are still working out the kinks with the publicity side of things, we want to publicise everything as well as we can ofc but only once the details have been finalised.

 

Truth be told, no event is ever really finalised until it actually starts, and not always then!

The L&B season is almost always top-n-tailed by the Spring and Autumn Galas, which are almost always (I think one year the Autumn Gala was moved by a week) the nearest weekend to the anniversary of the line's opening and its closing, and other key dates such as Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Remembrance Day and Christmas/New Year are all fairly fixed, so even without all the details being finalised, it should be possible to pencil in those dates at least a year in advance.

 

Again as I've said, its all a work in progress and things are still being developed.

 

If in future the railway is in a position where it can advertise it's events with more than just dates then yes I'm sure they will do just that.

 

Just advertising the dates with nothing else is still worth doing in my view. Particularly if everyone else has announced their dates, even if nothing else you risk the chance that people will start planning what events they want to do without yours being in the mix.