The benefits of Business Improvement Districts

By Chris Turner Head of Research, Savills Place

Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) are self-help groups whereby businesses come together, by way of a ballot every five years, to contribute into a shared fund to make sure that their district or community is improved in a wide range of different ways.

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There are now 341 Business Improvement Districts across the British Isles, there are thousands around the world, and over 70 in London. Often people are not aware that they are living working and doing business inside a Business Improvement District but where things are working well, people feel safe and the place feels attractive, they very often are. Most are in high streets and town centres; some are in industrial estates and other commercial areas and there are many in tourist and coastal areas. Some are large, with over a thousand businesses, others are small with only a few hundred, but they all provide the extra service delivery that each business community needs.

Generally, each business contributes some 1.5% of its rateable value every year to allow a fund to be set up to pay for a solution to key local issues that are affecting businesses today. Those issues are services such as safety and security, greening and street attractiveness, street cleaning, graffiti removal, marketing and communications, events and experiences and those extras that make the experience of coming into a town or high street just that little bit better for clients, residents, and customers.

The Business Improvement District is generally set up by a group of businesspeople in a community that want to make a contribution. They gather around them a group of similar businesses, whether independent retailers, solicitors and accountants, restaurants or national chains, who take the Business Improvement District through its first ballot. Before the Business

“I would like to express our gratitude to our Safer Business Marshals. They have been working with Savills, who prepared a feasibility study based on feedback from local businesses, for a BID in Central Hounslow, where unreported crime, monitored by us, is up.”

Alan Rides, CEO, West London Chambers of Commerce

Improvement District is set up a board is formed and the BID becomes a not-for-profit limited company, whose task is to focus on improving the businesses in that community in any way that they want.

It is the board that makes the decisions and the local businessmen and women on that board have a critical role to play in ensuring that it is the business needs of the area that are met. Those business needs have to be met speedily; the huge advantage of a business improvement district is that there is a pot of money that can be spent on the needs of those businesses, and that money can be spent within days, if need be, as long as the board and the local businesses are in agreement.

Thus, across the country, we see high streets and town centres becoming safer, becoming more attractive, having events and displays that bring people into the town, have restaurants and cafes that attract attract clients and customers into the town, who come to enjoy themselves, to feel safe, to do business, and to live, work and play. There are currently some 60 business communities across the country that are working to set up a new Business Improvement District and they are enthusiastic about becoming involved in a project that actually works, that brings the business community together in a very innovative and energetic fashion and allows the business community to feel that it is doing the right thing right and making their business community better than it would otherwise be.

“Having the extra finances which are ringfenced for the BID area, makes a huge difference. The retailers and businesses have a say on where monies can be spent – extra rubbish collections, graffiti removal, security guards and entertainment, ensuring our high streets become destinations, bringing fun back to shopping!”

Jamie Catling, McDonald’s franchisee, Hounslow