Ramsgate has been named one of six winning towns in the national 2025 Let’s Celebrate Towns Awards and receives £20,000 to fund work by Ramsgate Space CIC.
The town was recognised in the Small Business Support category for the work of Ramsgate Space CIC, a community interest company established to tackle the area’s high vacancy rate by turning empty shops into opportunities for the community.
Chosen from more than 200 entries across the UK, Ramsgate joins a select group of towns celebrated for exceptional grassroots leadership and innovation in supporting small businesses and entrepreneurs.
The awards were presented by Visa in partnership with the British Retail Consortium at a ceremony at the House of Lords on Wednesday 16 July. Ramsgate Space CIC co-founder and director Caroline Swain-Fenton accepted the prize.
As part of the award, Ramsgate Space CIC will receive £20,000 in funding to help:
- Secure and sustain its physical high street presence
- Extend its business support programme into autumn 2025
- Launch a Hospitality Incubator to accelerate food and hospitality ventures
- Develop an Invest in Ramsgate programme to attract further landlord and funder engagement
- Produce toolkits and case studies for organisations looking to secure premises, and build their businesses sustainably
This award follows funding from the Thanet BOOST programme, managed by Social Enterprise Kent, which is helping Ramsgate Space CIC develop its kitchen facilities to support its growing Hospitality Incubator, designed to stimulate growth of the hospitality sector in Ramsgate through short term residencies at the team’s HQ.
Louise Brooks, co-founder of Ramsgate Space CIC, said: “Ramsgate is a town of both opportunity and urgency. We’re proud to be helping unlock potential through grassroots action, and grateful to Visa and the British Retail Consortium for recognising that the future of our high streets depends on the people building them.”
East Thanet MP Polly Billington said: “I’m proud to see this fantastic female-led social enterprise from Ramsgate win Visa’s Let’s Celebrate Towns Small Business Support award.
“Their work transforming empty shops into vibrant community spaces is a brilliant example of how community-led regeneration can drive real change.”
Ramsgate faces significant structural challenges: it ranks among the top 10% of most deprived areas in England, youth unemployment stands at 11.6%, and 18% of its retail units remain vacant—many unlisted or unsuitable for use.
Despite recent capital investment in infrastructure and heritage, support for early-stage enterprise and access to affordable space has remained out of reach for many.
Ramsgate Space CIC is addressing that gap head-on from its base in a once-vacant council-owned unit in Albert Court by providing:
- Low-risk test trading opportunities for start-ups and creatives
- Free peer-led business support delivered by local experts and national figures, hosted by the organisation’s Non-Executive Director and Enterprise Nation founder Emma Jones
- Hands-on lease support and landlord negotiation
- Strategic collaboration with local authorities and business groups
The group’s first major success has resulted in Salt Barbers and performance collective Screaming Alley taking shared tenancy of 12 Queen Street.
Ramsgate Space CIC facilitated the match, supported the lease negotiations, and helped limit the financial risk.
Ramsgate Space CIC has also taken a central role in town centre regeneration, running the Ramsgate Empty Shops Working Group, helping to establish the new Ramsgate Traders Group, and recently hosting a national policy forum with 60 government and industry leaders.
The organisation aims to play a pivotal role in Ramsgate in the roll out of the High Street Rental Auctions – where local authorities have powers to auction leases on properties empty for 12+ months- and the Plan for Neighbourhoods which has awarded a £20m fund to Ramsgate over 10 years for community-led regeneration.
The Let’s Celebrate Towns programme, launched in 2022, honours towns across the UK that are driving inclusive growth and economic resilience through creative local leadership.
“We believe that when our towns thrive, the UK as a whole flourishes,” said Mandy Lamb, Managing Director, Visa UK & Ireland. “We are proud to highlight the resilience and innovation that define these towns, reinforcing our support for nurturing prosperity and economic opportunity across the UK.”
Find out more at: www.ramsgatespace.com
Good luck. I was curious so checked out Ramsgate Space’s website. I see on their ‘Business Support’ page two events are listed: Building a Brand (how to connect with local audiences) and Crafting a Marketing Strategy (influencer marketing). And yet, the Instagram link on their website doesn’t work. You get taken to a page where (if using a phone) Instagram say ‘The profile that you’re looking for doesn’t exist’ or if on a laptop ‘Sorry, this page isn’t available’. A similar kind of poetry can be found on the ‘About’ page, where the word ‘vandalism’ is spelled ‘vadalism’. Someone’s nicked the ‘n’. This of course, all being true at the time of me leaving this comment – perhaps it will all be fixed quickly.
that wont last long once they get thier hands on it , it will soon be swallowed up.
Another profound comment from ‘Real World’.
THEN AGAIN MARY PROTAS SAID SHE WILL GET THE EMPTY SHOPS IN MARGATE OPEN AGAIN-THIS WAS IN MID 2000. WELL – NOTHING HAS CHANGED-THE CINEMA IS STILL SHUT NOW THE WINTER GARDENS- SO YEAH THINGS CANT BE BETTER.
£20k… great… they can open some more subsidised cafe’s. Everyone drink coffee and cure the local economy.
If more cafés open, I hope they don’t follow the example of Union Ramsgate (the yoga and café venue) in Queen Street. The Food Standards Agency currently give them a hygiene rating of 2. However, they are displaying a sticker claiming their hygiene rating is 5 …
Nothing about people like me who are homophobic, don’t judge I was born this way!