Annual Review Year 13: 1 July 2020 - 31 March 2021

Annual Review - Year 13 1 July 2020 to 31 March 2021 st

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We believe in working collaboratively, supporting all our businesses across the BID to create, develop and promote a city centre to be proud of.

©ESSENTIAL EDINBURGH 2021 | The reproduction or publication of any part of this document is strictly prohibited.

Contents 6 8 10 20 26 32 36 40

Team & Board Introduction Promoting Enhancing Protecting Engaging Accounts Get in Touch

ESSENTIAL EDINBURGH Annual Review July 2020 to March 2021 | 4

We are Essential Edinburgh, looking after you and our city centre.

A small, hard-working team, committed to delivering for you.

Team & Board The Team

Directors

Emily Johnston Senior Manager, Marketing & Communications

Barry Blamire, The John Lewis Partnership

Louise Maclean, Signature Pub Group

David Stewart, Aberdeen Standard Investments

Louise Masson, Harvey Nichols

Gillian James Business Engagement Manager Grant Roberts Business Engagement Manager Grant Stewart Senior Manager, Projects

David Stewart, DM Stewart

Martin Clarke, The Edinburgh Woollen Mill (Resigned)

Denzil Skinner, Chair

Nick Peel, St James Quarter Edinburgh

Derek Brownlee, Royal Bank of Scotland Jenny McPartlin, Marks and Spencer (Resigned)

Mark Farvis Digital Media Manager

Josh Miller, Charlie Miller Hairdressing

Roddy Smith Chief Executive & Director

Councillor Kate Campbell, Housing and Economy Convener, City of Edinburgh Council

Company Secretary - David Lindgren

Essential Clean Team James Reilly, Contract Manager Mitie (Clean Team are sub-contracted to Mitie) ESSENTIAL EDINBURGH Annual Review July 2020 to March 2021 | 6

The past year has been a rollercoaster for everyone. All projects and initiatives required prioritising, ensuring we can continue to deliver what is needed by you, our businesses.

On behalf of the Directors and staff of Essential Edinburgh, we have pleasure in presenting our annual report for the nine-month period ending 31st March 2021.

Introduction We are pleased to report that strong progress against our targets has continued.

As with most organisations we have been impacted severely by the COVID-19 pandemic. By necessity we amended the businesses priorities as we strive to support you, by delivering the most needed and relevant services whilst working hard to support the initial stages of recovery.

This Annual Review covers a nine-month period, from July 2020 to March 2021. The Directors made the decision to amend our financial year to correspond to the levy invoice year. This is shown in both the reduced levy income billed and amount received (page 34).

The period covered by this report has seen a time in the city centre’s history like no other. Retailers and hospitality businesses were closed for significant periods of time and office workers were based predominately at home. As a city centre, we have been hit harder than anywhere else in this regard.

We concentrated on communications, security, cleaning, and promotion as well as delivering as much of our commitments as the COVID-19 restrictions would allow.

Planning for the recovery has also been crucial, with our staff playing a key role in many cross-city working groups to ensure we could hit the ground running once our residents, workers and visitors could return.

As we head into the final two years of our term, we are committed to supporting the recovery and optimising our financial resources to prioritise the return of footfall to the city centre.

We will continue to work pro-actively with partners, looking at longer-term factors that will bring ongoing success to Edinburgh City Centre. The George Street redesign, how we support the continued need for changes on Princes Street and the spread of footfall throughout the BID area will be key priorities over the coming years.

How we market and promote our city to the world, how we address continued support for the festivals and events sectors, and ensuring our city centre is clean and safe are of equally high importance.

We truly believe the city centre will and is recovering strongly. We have seen major new developments open with new entrants to the city in the retail, hospitality, and offices sectors, as well as exciting public realm proposals and transformational building projects.

Edinburgh City Centre is truly like no other, and whilst we should all embrace our historic past, we must also plan for an exciting future.

Roddy Smith, CEO | Denzil Skinner, Chair

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We are Essential Edinburgh, looking after you and our city centre.

©St James Quarter Edinburgh 2021

A vibrant city centre encourages people to visit it, spend time in it, want to work in it and return to it.

Promoting

Spend: £139,057 - 21% of Total BID Project Budget

A thriving city centre is a place people want to be. We have carefully invested 21% of the total BID project budget in promoting the BID area, creating activity and engagement to support the BID community.

Footfall This reporting period has been like no other. With retailers and hospitality businesses closed for months on end, office workers asked to work from home for over 18 months and national lockdowns that prevented travel, it is unsurprising that city centre footfall took an enormous dent, down 76% compared to the same nine months the previous year.

Since the second lockdown ended in April 2021 footfall has seen a revival. With the relaxation of restrictions May was busier than two years ago, seeing an increase of 15.5% on May 2019.

In April 2020 we changed our footfall data supplier. To ensure comparability of data, the annual footfall figures for this annual review refer to Princes Street only.

Sales Monitor Project The sales monitor project was paused in April 2020 due to lockdown and business closures. We restarted in August 2020 comparing to 2019 figures for those businesses that had re-opened.

It is unsurprising to see the drastic decline in sales for retail and hospitality for the months business were open.

The lack of office workers and visitors hit the city centre harder than any other area of Edinburgh, and with both local and national government encouraging residents to “Shop Local” this increased the negative effect on the city centre.

The opening of St James Quarter at the end of June 2021 brought an additional boost to the city centre. Relaxation of travel restrictions saw an increase in domestic and home nations tourism, a welcome uplift for businesses.

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In partnership with ETAG and City of Edinburgh Council we continue to support the delivery of the key Forever Edinburgh marketing campaign.

Sign of a Great Time Marketing Campaign Following a hugely successful start to 2020 with our “Edinburgh Greats” series of social media videos, helping to achieve increased retail and hospitality sales for January and February 2020, we paused all advertising and media spend during the National lockdowns.

With safety in the forefront of the mind, we focussed our attention on creating as safe an environment in the city centre as possible.

Using our marketing campaign creative, we re-skinned all the junction planters along Rose Street and George Street with social distancing messages.

We used the same creative for signs in and around St Andrew Square, provided window, floor and pavement signage to ensuring the consistent use of messaging and visual identity across the BID area,

reinforcing our important message.

Throughout the nine-months this report covers we created content and curated levy-payer content for the campaign social media channels and website, ensuring that residents were regularly reminded of the businesses within the city centre.

By keeping them in the forefront of consumers’ minds, reminding them of all the wonderful reasons to come into the city centre, we aimed to keep them engaged and responsive.

In the coming months Sign of a Great Time marketing campaign will again become more prominent. We will continue to use targeted digital adverts, print adverts and organic social media content to ensure we promote all businesses within the BID where possible.

If you have anything for us to share across the campaign channels, please email us.

Forever Edinburgh In partnership with ETAG and City of Edinburgh Council we continue to support the delivery of the key Forever Edinburgh marketing campaign, ensuring our BID and city is marketed to domestic visitors and residents, with an eye to future national and international promotion.

Edinburgh’s official destination marketing website edinburgh.org, and the China Ready Weibo and WeChat channels have been re-branded for the duration of the campaign.

All materials, images and content are freely available to use, and your support of the campaign will help amplify the message through your own audiences.

Find out more: www.etag.org.uk

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We are Essential Edinburgh, looking after you and our city centre.

A firm favourite of businesses and residents, this annual free film bonanza was rescheduled, due to the pandemic, from June 2020 to August 2021.

Social & Digital Media During this nine-month period we continued to keep communications active and engaging with our levy-payers and consumers; using reduced resources to promote the city centre as effectively as possible.

We helped promote over 90 different businesses across our city centre channels with either social media posts or website or newsletter listings.

During the crucial pre-Christmas trading period of October to December 2020 we focussed much of our in-house resources on our city centre social channels, the result was an organic increase to our Twitter reach by more than 300% compared to that same period the year before.

best performing adverts we have ever produced, driving awareness for the hugely successful Festival of Kindness.

We also kept up the growth momentum with our Instagram page, organically increasing the following by 4.9%, while our LinkedIn following grew by 25%.

George Street Festival Due to the cancellation and shift to on-line activity of all the summer festivals in 2020, we were unable to coordinate activity on George Street during this reporting year.

Film Fest in the City A firm favourite of businesses and residents, this annual free film bonanza was rescheduled, due to the pandemic, from June 2020 to August 2021.

Excitingly we were able to increase from three to seven days of free films and as always, we were able to offer all levypaying businesses the opportunity for free advert space on the giant cinema screen.

The report of this event will be included in next year’s Annual Review.

We will continue to engage with the festivals and venue operators to ensure the BID area remains actively involved, with business benefitting from the additional footfall, atmosphere and spend.

While on Facebook, we invested a very limited budget in running one of the ESSENTIAL EDINBURGH Annual Review July 2020 to March 2021 | 14

Our Business Engagement Managers are not just a key communication conduit, they are there to support your business in any way they can.

Edinburgh Farmers’ Market Essential Edinburgh made the strategic decision to stop running the Edinburgh Farmers’ Market in August 2020, to allow the business to concentrate time and staff resource on other priorities.

Edinburgh Gift Card The Edinburgh Gift Card launched alongside the City Centre Marketing Campaign in October 2018. It is a pre-paid Mastercard that is currently accepted in over 90 BID area businesses.

We transferred the assets of the market to a new co-operative of traders and are sure the market will continue to go from strength to strength and bring much needed footfall into the city centre each Saturday.

It is helping to lock in spend for Edinburgh city centre businesses; encouraging people to explore our great city and share their messages with friends, family and colleagues. Since launch over £75,000 has been loaded to cards, with almost £23,000 during this nine-month reporting period.

As a levy-payer it’s free and easy to accept the gift card. There’s no additional hardware or software required, no joining fee and you can now sign-up in seconds on-line. So make sure you are signed up to accept the Edinburgh Gift Card and share in the benefit of the locked-in spend in the city centre.

Communicating with You We work hard as a team, using every tool at our disposal, to share important and interesting information, helping you to stay engaged and updated.

We use all available digital platforms, and our Business Engagement Managers, to keep the information flowing. Do make sure you are following us on social media, and that you are on our mailing list.

Our Business Engagement Managers are not just a key communication conduit, they are there to support your business in any way they can.

Despite being on furlough for almost half this nine-month review, our Business Engagement Managers supported 172 different businesses during this time.

To find out more, get in touch with our Business Engagement Managers by email: marketing@essentialedinburgh.co.uk

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Business Engagement Managers Grant Roberts and Gillian James

With over 140,000 Chinese students in the UK, they are a large and influential market for local businesses to engage with.

St Andrew Square Garden At Christmas For Christmas 2020 we ensured St Andrew Square Garden was as beautiful in the evenings as during the day.

Instagrammable light hoops, illuminated trees, enhanced lighting and projections created a truly festive feel for those visiting or passing through the garden.

Burns & Beyond In partnership with Unique Events and other city partners, we supported a virtual Burns & Beyond Festival in January 2020.

Plans are already well underway for a return to physical activities for 2022.

We would like to encourage all businesses to engage with Burns & Beyond where possible to maximise the benefit for city centre businesses, so please keep your eyes peeled for more news in our weekly email updates.

China Ready – Weibo & WeChat We continue to support ETAG’s China Ready project with their digital activation through Weibo & WeChat.

With over 140,000 Chinese students in the UK, they are a large and influential market for local businesses to engage with.

With over 98,000 combined followers and over 254 million impressions to March 2021 the official Edinburgh Weibo and WeChat channels are increasingly valuable assets for local businesses.

The BID area has been continually promoted across Edinburgh’s official Weibo and WeChat channels towards the Chinese audience. ETAG has featured the BID area in the first-ever Chinese Student Travel Guidebook to Edinburgh, also introduced the BID area as a must-visit shopping destination at the University of Edinburgh Pre-departure and alumni events towards prospective Chinese students.

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Our Clean Team have removed 2,120 instances of flyposting, up 55% compared to the same ninemonth period the previous year.

Enhancing

Spend: £127,449 - 19% of Total BID Project Budget

We’ve strategically invested 19% of the total BID project budget to enhance the BID area, ensuring an atmospheric, clean and attractive year-round destination.

Clean Team Throughout this nine-month reporting period our Clean Team continued to deliver a superb and unrivalled additional cleansing service for our levypayers, above and beyond the statutory responsibility of Edinburgh Council.

They delivered gum busting and doorway disinfecting across the BID and provided an emergency call out service, on top of their daily rounds.

There were sharp increases in instances of graffiti and flyposting, 65% and 55% respectively.

There was also an increase in our Clean Team responding to environmental waste, up 54% on the same nine-month period the previous year.

In total the team dealt with 361 instances of environmental and hazardous waste, which includes the disposal and clean-up of drugs paraphernalia.

In the same period, the Clean Team’s Rapid Response service helped 194 businesses, responding to the call-outs within an hour.

From July 2020 to March 2021 the Clean Team removed almost 13,000 bags of waste for recycling and also cleaned gum and disinfected 4,500m2 of our city centre streets.

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“I was arriving at my church in George Street to bake scones for our community cafe and noticed two men picking up litter from the pavement outside the front of the church. Thinking they must be Council employees I asked them if they were going to pick up the litter and fag ends in the area round the tree...One of them explained that they worked for Essential Edinburgh but were very happy to tidy the area. I was delighted. Our Church was built as the parish church for the emerging New Town and is an integral part of the New Town design.

Thank you for the goodwill and generosity of spirit shown by the pair wearing your logo. They deserve our praise and thanks.”

Barbara Ramsay, Elder, the Kirk Session of St Andrews and St George’s West.

The most recent Audit for 2021 shows a cleanliness score of 94%, a slight increase of 1% compared to last year.

Clean Team Audit Each year Mitie conduct an audit of all BID area streets, based on a nationally recognised rating system. The most recent Audit for 2021 shows a cleanliness score of 94%, a slight increase of 1% compared to last year.

Once hospitality businesses reopened there was a sharp rise in discarded chewing gum.

The most affected areas were George Street, St Andrew Square, West Register Street, South St David and South St Andrew Street, Register Place and Hanover Street. This is the only area of concern – scoring 74%. All other ratings were in the high 90s, with general cleanliness and instance of flyposting scoring the highest ratings of 99%.

Changeworks Recycling As would be expected with business closures and reduced operations Changeworks Recycling had a significantly reduced nine-month period. For this reporting period 79 tonnes of CO2 was diverted from landfill - benefitting both individual BID businesses and the environment.

They collected a total of 331 tonnes of waste with a recycling rate of 63%. Almost a third of all BID businesses benefit from our favourable group-buying rate with Changeworks Recycling, and the more businesses that sign up, the lower costs become for everyone. They come into your business to collect your waste too, so no more bags of waste on pavements!

St Andrew Square Garden St Andrew Square Garden is more than a well-used thoroughfare; it is a much enjoyed and vibrant city centre space, providing a tranquil and reflective place to spend time. In the last nine months we have continued to both improve and enhance the garden alongside our annual planned maintenance, to ensure it is kept in pristine condition all year round.

If you have not yet switched, do give them a call; you could save some money and the environment at the same time!

Contact details on the back cover ESSENTIAL EDINBURGH Annual Review July 2020 to March 2021 | 22

We are Essential Edinburgh, looking after you and our city centre.

“Our thanks go to Essential Edinburgh once again for supporting this campaign and being a key part of the success.”

Josh Littlejohn, Co-Founder Social Bite Seasonal Decorations An attractive environment is extremely important to encourage regular and repeat footfall. Floral displays and seasonal decorations enhance the city centre atmosphere, creating an attractive and welcoming city centre experience.

To create this ambience year-round we continue to invest in seasonal floral displays in our George Street planters, maintain the trees in Rose Street and ensure St Andrew Square Garden is the jewel in the crown of city centre spaces.

We continue to solely fund the Christmas Light Trees on George Street to ensure a fitting festive display during this crucial trading period.

In addition, in November 2020 we installed additional lighting in St Andrew Square Garden to create a festive and beautiful backdrop for shoppers.

Festival Of Kindness We partnered with Social Bite for Christmas 2020 to deliver the first Festival of Kindness in St Andrew Square Garden.

With our investment in upgrading the Rose Street canopy lights with state-of-the-art colour changing LEDs, we continue to have the only part of our capital city with yearround enhanced dressing.

A fantastic tree and enhanced animation provided a drop off point for Edinburgh residents and businesses to deliver gifts for those in need at the festive period.

This was hugely successful with more than 6,000 gifts donated in Edinburgh, and a partnership we are very keen to extend in the years to come.

Festival Of Kindness is returning to St Andrew Square Garden for Christmas 2021.

To find out more, or get involved, please email us: marketing@essentialedinburgh.co.uk

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“We were delighted when we received the go ahead to host our Festival of Kindness campaign at St Andrew Square, thanks to Essential Edinburgh. It was the first year of scaling up our ambitious plans at Christmas time, and at the end of such a difficult year for everyone, especially people that find themselves in a situation of homelessness, we knew we had to do more.

The Festival of Kindness campaign outperformed all our expectations, we were astounded to see the generosity of so many people gifting hundreds of presents each day and donating thousands of pounds to provide Christmas meals throughout the festive period and beyond, and the location of St Andrew Square had a huge part to play in this. Our thanks go to Essential Edinburgh once again for supporting this campaign and being a key part of the success.”

Josh Littlejohn, Co-Founder Social Bite

Total recorded crime is down 40% compared to last year*, and down 71% compared to the five-year average.

Protecting

Spend: £41,642 - 6% of Total BID Project Budget

Protecting staff, customers and businesses is of vital importance for a thriving city centre. Our partnerships with Police Scotland and Cyrenians, supported by our security initiatives, are helping to deliver a safer and more welcoming city centre for everyone.

BID Cop Our ground-breaking partnership with Police Scotland provides an enhanced police presence, and active support for our businesses, through PC Leo Baker. As well as providing a single point of contact for all BID businesses, PC Baker provides vital alerts and security updates for businesses from Police Scotland.

PC Baker regularly visits BID businesses to offer advice, support and training.

Between July 2020 and March 2021, Leo visited 48 different businesses, with 120 total interactions. The support offered ranged from “Hard Target” talks and antishoplifting advice to support with noise complaints and reports of vandalism.

Two bike marking events were able to take place in this reporting year, helping to address the growing issues around cycle theft. PC Baker marked and added 24 bikes to the national register, helping

speed up reuniting stolen bicycles with their owners. Leo has also provided information ranging from alerts to counterfeit currency, to seasonal police campaigns to counter-terrorism reports.

Complemented by our Check Out communication system which links over 160 retailers with the police, our joined-up approach continues to deliver real results in reducing retail crime in the city centre.

*Crime figures from Police Scotland are for the reporting year – 1st April 2020 to 31st March 2021. Crime figures are for the whole City Centre Ward area. Reported crimes included are: Serious Assault, Housebreaking to a business, Robbery, Vandalism, Minor Assault and the total of these five areas, with a five-year average.

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Crime Statistics April 2020 - March 2021 Total recorded crimes and offences down 39.7% compared to last year and down 71.1% compared to the five-year average.

Serious assault, housebreaking to a business, robbery, vandalism and minor assault were all significantly lower than the year before and the five-year average.

Total detection rates for crimes and offences were also lower than last year and the five-year average by 36.9% and 35.3% respectively, with all individual areas also having lower detection rates than last year and the five-year average.

NB. The 5 year average does not include current year data. Recorded crime is all crime reported to Police, detected crime is the number of crimes solved.

During 2020/21 there were a variety of COVID pandemic restrictions and lockdowns. It is recommended that the primary comparator used as a baseline is a five-year average.

Recorded Crime

Detected Crime

Total crimes and offences

Total crimes and offences

-39.7% on last year

-36.9% on last year

-71.1% on 5-year average

-35.3% on 5-year average

Serious Assault

Serious Assault

-74.6% on last year

-69.3% on last year

-338.7% on 5 year average

-71.5% on 5 year average

Housebreaking to a business

Housebreaking to a business

-15.8% on last year

-15.2% on last year

-72.1% on 5 year average

-22.7% on 5 year average

Robbery

Robbery

-28% on last year

-8.3% on last year

-38.9% on 5 year average

-5.2% on 5 year average

Vandalism

Vandalism

-21.4% on last year

-3.9% on last year

-34.7% on 5 year average

-0.2% on 5 year average

Minor assault

Minor assault

-53.2% on last year

-53.5% on last year

-119% on 5 year average

-53.3% on 5 year average

Source: Police Scotland, statistics for Edinburgh City Centre Ward area

Protecting staff, customers and businesses is of vital importance for a thriving city centre.

Security Initiatives We continue to operate multiple channels to tackle and minimise crime within the BID; Check Out for retailers, Check In for hoteliers, Gold Watch for jewellers and Pub Watch for hospitality businesses all helping to make the city centre an unattractive location for crime.

Check In During this year we delivered a new reporting website for Check In members.

Our accommodation providers have a central point to alert others to concerns and criminality, helping accommodation providers across the city to share their information across the city centre network.

We facilitated the distribution of 207 circulations to 230 hotel subscribers.

Check Out We still lead the way with our innovative approach to tackling retail crime by working in partnership. By coordinating and sharing information with Police Scotland from over 165 signed-up retailers helps to make our BID an unappealing target for shoplifters.

With a very disturbed trading period and enforced retail closures for the national lockdown after Christmas 2019, it was not surprising to see circulations were down 53% compared to the same period the year before. Between 1st July 2020 and 31st March 2021, we shared data of 165 incidents with our partners.

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PC Leo Baker Police Scotland

The strength of our work comes from the city-wide partnerships that exist between the key providers of support in the city.

Navigator Project – with Cyrenians We’re proud to partner with Cyrenians supporting their amazing work caring for the homeless community in our city.

months of 2021, but as regulations have relaxed and footfall has begun to increase again in the city centre, there has been a return of city centre street begging.

Our £10,000 investment funds Cyrenians’ Outreach Workers as part of the Navigator Project, working on a one-to-one basis with rough sleepers on the streets. They provide support by developing individual relationships, responding to the person’s specific priorities and supporting them to address these.

A significant number of foreign nationals who previously were members of Edinburgh’s Street Community were voluntarily repatriated during lockdown.

As travel restrictions relaxed some have returned, but not at their former level, access to the EU Settled Scheme has also had an impact.

As lockdown began they shifted their focus to getting everyone safely off the streets, made achievable thanks to fantastic multi-agency working. This co-ordinated approach made a huge difference to Edinburgh’s homeless experience of the pandemic.

Over the course of 2020/2021 the Navigator Project had approximately 400 separate encounters, supporting approximately 70 separate individuals.

Rough sleeping hit an all-time low of less than 10 people sleeping rough in the early

The team also supported over 100 people to move away from homelessness into permanent homes of their own, through the Housing First scheme. A pathway was also established to allow

accommodation to be found for 61 people, who were homeless, to leave hospital into accommodation.

On-going support relationships have been maintained with 13 different individuals, with 4 moving into permanent tenancies, 1 maintaining hostel-type accommodation, and 2 obtaining hostel-type supported accommodation.

How can you help?

• If you think someone is in immediate danger on the street, call Police Scotland on 999 or 101 • If you see someone sleeping rough who you think needs support, call Cyrenians on 0131 475 2503 • If you or someone you know is at immediate risk of homelessness, call 0800 032 5968

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Essential Edinburgh has worked on your behalf, engaging with many exciting projects and developments in the city.

Engaging

Spend: £1,160 - 0.2% of Total BID Project Budget

We amplify your voice, ensuring that your views are heard when key decisions that impact your business or the city centre are made.

George Street Project Essential Edinburgh chaired the Steering Group for the re-design of George Street, representing your views throughout the consultation.

We have supported small and large group discussions on the re-design as well as the successful £20 million funding application to Sustrans. We have helped Council officers and consultants to deliver a design principle unanimously approved by elected members at the Council.

Transforming the City Centre The St James Quarter was nearing completion in this reporting period. With regular engagement we are supporting the integration of the development with the rest of the city centre.

The Johnnie Walker Visitor Centre opened in September 2021, giving vital focus for the west end of the BID area.

Other exciting developments are planned for the former Jenners, Royal Overseas League and Debenhams buildings. We have been vocal in our support for these, as well as other city centre developments.

We have been working extensively behind the scenes to support any potential changes of use or redevelopment of space in the city centre. Unfortunately, as a result of the pandemic and the move of some businesses to the St James Quarter, there are vacant units that may need repurposing. We see this as a key priority going forward.

FUSE In preparation for the opening of the St James Quarter, the Edinburgh Training Academy was set up.

FUSE is delivering high quality recruitment and training for retail, leisure and hospitality sectors, offering our levy-payers high quality training opportunities for all their staff and supporting their recruitment needs at no cost.

Our partnership with FUSE is already supporting employment opportunities and recruitment for levy payers within the BID area. This important project will help to address both closures and openings and support levy-paying businesses across the city centre.

If you are recruiting, or want training for your staff, please get in touch with the FUSE team; contact details are on the back cover.

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We have continued to play important roles on many city-wide working groups supporting the recovery and influencing the future of our city centre.

City Centre Monitoring Project This reporting period was the start of our collaboration with Intechnology, the company that delivers Edinburgh’s free WiFi service, to provide footfall information for the BID area. Alongside our retail and hospitality sales monitor, these are vital metrics to enable us to monitor the vitality of the city centre each year.

These key indicators are reported on our ‘stats dashboard’ on the Essential Edinburgh website, and within our Friday email updates.

Wayfinding We are working proactively with the City of Edinburgh Council and Transport for Edinburgh, looking at wayfinding throughout the city centre, and have been integral to the solution being discussed.

Our Rose Street directories, at the ends of each block, remain the only physical wayfinding and business directory in the city.

Engaging in Conversation We have continued to play important roles on many city-wide working groups supporting the recovery and influencing the future of our city centre. These include ETAG, Chamber of Commerce, Edinburgh Economic Forum, Edinburgh Business Resilience Group, Forever Edinburgh and the Strategic Implementation Group for Tourism.

The directories are updated and refreshed each year.

We continue to chair the partnership group for St Andrew Square to discuss the key issues needed to maintain it as a highquality open space in the city centre.

Rose Street The replacement works on Rose Street have now come to an end. During this reporting period we continued to work with Council staff and contractors to facilitate effective communication with local businesses.

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We are Essential Edinburgh, looking after you and our city centre.

Accounts 1st July 2020 to 31st March 2021

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Budget 1st April 2021 to 31st March 2022

Get in touch: Clean Team Rapid Response: 07919 560 290 Marketing Team: marketing@essentialedinburgh.co.uk

@EssentialEdin

Changeworks: kmclean@changeworksrecycling.co.uk Cyrenians: www.cyrenians.scot

@EdinCityCentre

FUSE: hello@edinburghfuse.com 113 (1f1) Rose Street Edinburgh EH2 3DT 0131 220 8580 www.EssentialEdinburgh.co.uk www.EdinburghCityCentre.co.uk info@essentialedinburgh.co.uk ©ESSENTIAL EDINBURGH 2021 | The reproduction or publication of any part of this document is strictly prohibited.