Penrith Town Council’s last meeting of the current council will take place on Monday.

The current 4 year council term of Penrith Town Council is coming to an end with the final meeting of the council set to take place at 6pm on Monday evening ahead of the elections taking place on the 4th of May for all 15 seats on the town council.

The Agenda for Monday’s last meeting of this council term includes the recommendations for councillors to approve a raft of policy that will govern the operation of the new council from May. Policy including the delegation of grant approvals to officers and policy that will regulate the actions and conduct of the new councillors elected to the council in May.

The meeting will also be asked to approve new branding for Penrith that used the town council street scene with three lines intended to represent mountains in the background.

The council report states that the branding has been developed by a Penrith Town Marketing group who’s membership is made up of Penrith Town Council, Cumbria County Council, Eden District Council, Penrith Chamber of Trade, Penrith Industrial Bid, Penrith Town Bid.

The town council have said The town marketing group "worked tirelessly throughout the Pandemic to deliver a communication plan to ensure that coherent and timely information was given to both residents and businesses.

Post Pandemic the group’s aim is to help local businesses recover and to encourage residents to shop local and to enjoy their local area whilst also attracting visitors away from the tourist ‘honey pot’ areas. A grant application was submitted to CCC to commission a Marketing consultant to develop a Marketing Plan for 2022.”

At a meeting of Penrith Town Council’s CCEG Committee held in March 2022 the marketing report was likened by town council members to something “a six form student could have written better”.

The council was at the time informed the same business that produced the marketing report was the only business that responded to the councils call to work with them to create the marketing report. The councillors were also told that the smae business had already been asked to work on the next stage to produce the branding the council will now be asked to approve on Monday as the Penrith Arts and Culture branding.

The proposed new branding using the Penrith Town Council streetscape with mountains as the brand for Penrith would be the property of Penrith Town Council with those wishing to use the branding required to have the permission from Penrith Town Council.

We showed the proposed branding to some shoppers in Penrith today who did not hold back on what they thought of the new branding.

With one likening it to “something off the kid’s tv show sesame street”.

Another saying, “the mountains in the branding looked nothing like Penrith Beacon.”

One local resident said is it “Aliens or Australians? Beam me up or throw me a boomerang?”

What do you think of the proposed branding?