Totnes Pound Feedback report

 The Pound is now into its Third Phase. There are around 70 member businesses and in total around 7,500 notes have been circulated. We believe that around about 4500 of those are still in circulation locally.

 Development of the project has been limited by the capacity of the volunteers involved. We have been trying to secure some development funding and are still trying to do so. We would also welcome more volunteer support

 There is still a lot of community development work to be done in building usage of the currency. Unfortunately this is one area where we have lacked resources. We would welcome suggestions how to get more usage from both the Transition Town community and the other people.

 For phase 3 we dropped the 5% exchange fee because businesses were not keen to cash them in and take the 5% hit and were therefore limiting their exposure. Now they are happy to take unlimited but the customer incentive has gone so we are trying to encourage them to be creative with how they use it, like River Link who are offering a discount on return tickets to Dartmouth which are bought with Totnes Pounds

 It is clear that there are limits to paper money in terms of business to business transactions. We hope to explore an electronic version in the not too distant future.

 The project has caught really caught the imagination and has generated a lot of positive media interest in the transition movement and in Totnes.  

 We are also keen to explore how we can back the currency with different assets rather than just sterling. We are thinking about food production and energy at the moment, but the currency could also be used to establish new businesses.