Visit Cheshire, run by Marketing Cheshire, plays a key role in promoting destinations, events and businesses across the region, raising an important question about how that role serves independent local businesses alongside local authorities.
When that promotion involves a council-sponsored event, a public-interest question arises: are taxpayers paying for the promotion of a fashion show on Visit Chester & Cheshire?
A Freedom of Information request to Knutsford Town Council is seeking invoices, agreements and expenditure records involving Visit Cheshire that could shed new light on the financial relationship behind the regional promotion.
When a local town council and regional tourism body work together to promote a rebranded fashion event alongside an established small independent business, the question for taxpayers is straightforward: how much public money, if any, was spent on that relationship and what did the public receive in return?
The records could establish whether Knutsford Town Council paid Visit Cheshire for promotional services, what those services cost, which budgets were used and how much, if anything, was ultimately funded by taxpayers.
Visit Cheshire was not new to the story. It had promoted Cheshire Fashion Week® as a regional fashion week since 2019, while also promoting Flash Fashion Knutsford, the council’s local fashion show, before it adopted its new “Fashion Week” identity.
So what changed between the two organisations when Flash Fashion became a Fashion Week? Was there a financial arrangement or partnership contract?
In April 2026, during the same period Cheshire Fashion Week® was announcing its 2026 return through a listing on Visit Cheshire, the council’s event was being promoted as Knutsford Flash Fashion, before changing to its new Knutsford Fashion Week identity. Heavy promotion followed, raising a straightforward public-interest question: what role did Knutsford taxpayers play in funding that promotion?
Was an existing promotional arrangement simply continued? Did expenditure change? Were additional services commissioned? And, crucially for taxpayers, what did the taxpayer actually pay for?
If Knutsford Town Council paid Visit Cheshire to promote its week-long fashion show, the public should be able to establish how much of tax payers money was spent to promote a fashion show and which council budget funded it.
Those questions also raise a wider issue for independent businesses, do Cheshire businesses have to pay to play? What are their chances of winning if they are going against a campaign funded by taxpayers? If a local authority and regional tourism body coordinate the promotion of a council-organised initiative, potentially supported by public expenditure, where does that leave an independent local business operating in the same regional market and financing its own activities?
Cheshire Fashion Week® independently built its name, audience and regional presence. If public resources contributed towards promoting a council-organised fashion event to an overlapping regional audience, what consideration was given to the existing independent business operating within that space?
This is not simply a question about fashion. It is a question about public expenditure, transparency and the relationship between publicly supported institutions and independent local businesses.
How much did Knutsford Town Council spend? How much, if anything, was paid to Visit Cheshire? Did expenditure change when Flash Fashion became a Fashion Week? And ultimately, what did Knutsford taxpayers receive in return?
The FOI response may provide the answers.
The full Freedom of Information request is publicly available, allowing residents to read exactly what information has been requested and follow the Council’s response.
Read the full Freedom of Information request
