On 17th June Natalie Rodrigues, Centre Administrator at High Chelmer Shopping Centre, successfully completed the London to Brighton bike ride in just over 5 hours. The route was 54 miles in total, with an estimated 27,000 cyclists taking part.

High Chelmer were proud to sponsor Natalie £250 for her successful ride and in total, Natalie raised £650 for the British Heart Foundation.

Last month heralded the start of a twenty week programme to demolish the old former Butterflies Café and create a new café offer (likely to be Starbucks) to one side of the square, with a disabled toilet, thus opening up the heart of the Centre to free flow of pedestrian traffic.

We will lay a new floor with a river like ribbon effect running through it and also a new ceiling and lighting. We are also proposing to install an information desk opposite the café. Unit 15 Exchange Way (formerly Cottage Delight) will also be refurbished and let separately and work is due to be completed in October. A lot of the more noisy and dusty work is going to take place outside of normal trading hours.

Many shops and stores have already been visited by the Centre Manager, Mick McDonagh and shown illustrations of the scheme and had the programme explained. Please find attached illustrations of our proposals so you can get a ‘feel’ for the scheme. We will endeavour to keep you fully informed of progress throughout the works with regular updates.

With continued traffic growth, congestion on the road network is an ever increasing problem. One potential solution to the congestion problem is through Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS).

We have a number of career opportunities available within Essex ITS. To discover more about Intelligent Transport Systems in Essex, please attend the Essex ITS Open Day where you'll get a chance to see many of the operating systems used to keep Essex moving.

The open day is being held at Atkins on the 12th June 2007 from 2-7pm.