ROYAL TUNBRIDGE WELLS TOGETHER BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT
ANNUAL REPORT 2022-2023 Funded by town centre businesses, working for town centre businesses. This report has been printed on FSC responsibly sourced paper
ABOUT US RTW Together was formed in 2019 after a yes! vote from local businesses to create a Business Improvement District and stands to run until March 2024, by which point there will be a new opportunity to vote on the future of the BID for Royal Tunbridge Wells. The RTWT BID is a not-for-profit organisation that is funded by and represents businesses in Tunbridge Wells town centre within the defined BID area. These businesses within the BID footprint contribute an annual levy based on the rateable value of the premises. RTW Together uses these funds to deliver projects and activities that are designed to provide a collaborative, more powerful voice to support the business community and improve the trading environment. We aim to promote the area and increase footfall through events and marketing campaigns and to provide services such as business training, street improvements and safety support. The BID and its operations are managed by the BID CEO, with a board of voluntary Directors (comprised of business representatives who fairly represent various sectors and areas across the town centre) overseeing the work of the BID team. The Business Improvement District is a community – We are committed to informing you how we can help your business, but as critically, we want to learn from you how we can best serve you. Please take the time to engage with us and keep up to date with the latest news and opportunities by :· Signing up to our monthly newsletter · Joining our WhatsApp group chat or social media channels · Visiting our website or office in the centre of town · Contacting us directly by phone or email · Attending our in-person meetings including our AGM · You could even apply to join our board and help steer our work more directly
FOREWORD FROM ALEX GREEN, CEO OF RTW TOGETHER BID Through the year 2022 – 2023, our fourth of a five-year initial BID programme, the BID has worked hard to support businesses as they continue to recover from the impacts of Covid and actively encourage residents and tourists alike to come back to the town. Under the direction of BID Director, Sarah-Jane Adams, and then myself as BID CEO for the last quarter of the year (January – March 2023), the focus has largely been on placing Royal Tunbridge Wells back in the spotlight. Promoting the town through events and campaigns, with the aim of making it a destination of choice once again, following the difficult years for our business members in getting through the pandemic. Our grants program that allows many festivals along with the events outlined in this report and future events like the Coronation will be supplemented by our Re-Discover Tunbridge Wells and Support Local campaigns which will build across 2023 and 2024. Serving our levy payers with training, activity to promote the breadth of retail, hospitality and professional services that we represent, and bringing a sense of community collaboration have all been at the fore of our minds. Much of our activity has focused on encouraging local residents to support local and help us to generate more business and footfall for our members. We have collaborated with our colleagues at Visit Kent and TWBC, to widen the reach of our messaging to local and overseas tourists, to encourage them to spend time in Royal Tunbridge Wells. We warmly welcome more of our members to become involved in the BID. All members have access to free publicity, free training programmes for employees, and a breadth of opportunities to have their say about the street scene and campaigns that we deliver to support our members. I look forward to supporting you so please do reach out to me and let me know what more you would like the BID to deliver to support your business. I have met many of our members but there are still others I would welcome having the opportunity to meet and telling you all of the current and upcoming plans we are working on. Contact me anytime by dropping me a line at biddirector@rtwtogether.com or join the Member’s WhatsApp group by scanning the QR code.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
PAM LOCH (resigned November 2022) Managing Director - Loch Associates, Mount Ephraim
ALEX GREIG, CHAIR Owner - Fuggles Beer Café and Fuggles Bottle Shop, Grosvenor Road and Camden Road
CLAUDIA WIEGAND (resigned October 2022) Owner - Glass by Claudia, Monson Road
RICHARD SIMM Director - The Forum, The Common & Fonthill pubs (Pantiles and Mount Ephraim)
PETER ALLINSON Owner - Whirligig Toys, Mount Pleasant Road
ALEX GREEN (resigned December 2022) CEO, Trinity Theatre, Church Road
GAVIN TYLER (resigned March 2023) Managing Partner - Cripps, Mount Ephraim
JUSTINE RUTLAND (joined May 2022) TWBC-appointed representative Cabinet Member for Economic Development
ALEXIA TAYLOR (joined October 2022) Manager – Walsh Bros, Mount Pleasant Road
CLARE WALLER (joined March 2023) Owner - Jeremy’s Home Store, Monson Road
NICOLA PAFFARD (joined March 2023) Partner – Cripps, Mount Ephraim
SIMON YOUDEN (joined September 2022) Store Director – Fenwick, Royal Victoria Place
MESSAGE FROM THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Each of the Board Directors represents a levy payer within Royal Tunbridge Wells, and so like you, we tasked the BID with investing the collective member funds in the core objectives that drive us all. These included; generating more income for local businesses, making it a place employees want to work in, ensuring Royal Tunbridge Wells is a destination that people want to visit and increasing the footfall of locals and tourists into the town. The board is carefully selected to ensure that it represents a broad cross-section of industry sectors from hospitality to professional services, retailers to traders. It also tries to ensure that it encompasses business based in all areas of the BID catchment area; from The High Street to Camden Road, The Pantiles to Mount Ephraim. We volunteer to undertake these roles as Board Directors because we genuinely care about the town centre where we have built our businesses and want to see all our members succeed in what have been some trying times for us all. In this first full year of trading, following on from two years mired by covid-19 restrictions, we demanded more of the BID. We wanted our town to be invested in, both from the street scene environment and from a safety perspective. We wanted the BID to provide useful and meaningful training for our employees to encourage them to stay and feel valued. We wanted to broaden the reach of people hearing about what our town has to offer. We wanted to support organisations producing events to ensure we had quality, exciting and different activities to offer visitors. Following the departure of Sarah-Jane Adams in January, we appointed a new BID CEO to take our vision and expand it and we are delighted to announce that Alex Green was appointed to the role, first on an interim basis and then, following a formal application process, as a permanent CEO. As a previous Board Director, Alex got under the skin of the role quickly, and in the final phase of this trading year, already made a huge impact. We move forward into 2023 – 2024 safe in the knowledge that his enthusiasm, professionalism, and vision will help the BID to realise our core objectives (please see page 14 for information about future plans).
TOWN ENHANCEMENTS & SAFETY SAFETY
TOWN ENHANCEMENTS We continued the work done by generating another ‘parklet’ area in the town, this time investing in purchasing six new large planters for the Fiveways area. Christmas 2022 saw us able to renew our scheme of supporting decorating shop units with popular fabric door bow decorations. This free initiative for BID members created impactful doorways which made the town look festive, welcoming, and ready for customers to walk in to peruse their Christmas offerings.
Safety is of paramount importance to the BID, we want visitors to our town to feel safe and supported when they spend time in the town centre. We pride ourselves on being a pleasant town to visit with low crime rates and we are committed to keeping it that way, so we; • financially contributed to the Safe Town Partnership and maintenance of critical CCTV infrastructure in the town centre • delivered ‘Operation Blitzen’, supplying response officers over the busy Christmas period • sponsored the Best Bar None Scheme and provided antidrink spiking kits to a number of venues across the town including Pitcher & Piano, Fuggles, The Opera House, Beau Nash and Aura.
We invested in the town’s Christmas Lights, bringing some much-needed warmth and festivity to enable residents and tourists to celebrate the festive period together. We also installed decorations above the front entrance of the Royal Victoria Place to assist with generating more footfall for our member shops and premises inside. Official light switch on events took place in Chapel Place with the voices of King Charles the Martyr Church choir generating a festive vibe and, on The Pantiles, generating great footfall to the area.
Some of the recipients of Best Bar None
BID SCHOOL Many of our members wanted to ensure that Royal Tunbridge Wells remains a town that employees want to come and work in, where they feel they are valued and invested in. To this end, we developed the ‘Bid School’, offering free training courses and workshops to staff and owners across our member base. In 2022 – 2023 we: supported businesses by offering free Emergency First Aid at work training days. The Highfield Level 3 Award covered unconscious casualties, CPR, choking, bleeding, shock and treatment of minor injuries launched photography and website training workshops to help them deliver great brand messaging we are also proud to announce that at the end of 2022 – 2023, we invested in purchasing an unlimited online training scheme with SEEDL for all BID members SEEDL Training Launched in March 2023, this innovative learning hub offers all employees that work in the town’s BID member businesses, free unlimited access to up to 200 live courses. The BID courses are uniquely all live interactive webinars, allowing employees to learn on a flexible basis, accessing webinars from their home or work premises. Employees are able to choose from a range of subjects including Retail Management, Mental Health & Wellbeing, Customer Service and office essentials such as Microsoft Excel and Project Management. With so many types of businesses in the town centre, SEEDL will be a great way for the BID to address learning needs of retailers and professional services firms alike. On completing a course, the employee can download a RTW Together completion of learning certificate, helping staff to register their continuing personal development.
PROJECTS Footfall Counters In March 23 we were excited to launch new pedestrian foot flow counters in the town centre by working with Springboard who supplement this with the use state of the art artificial and real time intelligence to allow us to create detailed statistics of footfall in the town and thereby provide valuable information for our levy payers and the town. Working with other local partners we can now measure footfall from the top to the bottom of town by hour, day and compare this against regional, national data and local impacts such as weather and events. This will become more valuable in the future as we can compare against prior years. The BID ran two core projects throughout the calendar year to help deliver increased footfall.
The Royal Tunbridge Wells Cake Off - June The Royal Tunbridge Wells Cake Off was designed to support the town’s hospitality sector whilst celebrating Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee in June 2022. The event took place on Saturday 4 June on The Pantiles, where members of the public sampled a variety of free ‘royal themed’ cakes and voted for their favourite in their droves. KMFM were on site to get peoples verdicts and report the results and were accompanied by live music performances and free face painting. Cakes were submitted from: • Tunbridge Wells Hotel, the Pantiles • Zero Waste Company, the Pantiles • The Plant Base, Camden Road • Il Vesuvio, Camden Road • Kumquat Café, the Pantiles • One Warwick Park • Taste Wells, RVP • Cake Shed, the Pantiles • Crumbs and Treacle, Camden Road The voting was a close-run thing. Taste Wells, located in Royal Victoria Place scooped the top spot, beating the second-place competition by only one vote. Zero Waste Company, situated on The Pantiles, came in a close second.
“It’s just been great to take part, alongside so many other businesses. It’s good for the town and for independent retailers.” Sarah Betts, Taste Wells, Royal Victoria Place
PROJECTS Art Week – August From 22 – 29 August, the BID delivered the town’s first ever FREE Art Week in Royal Tunbridge Wells. Activities included painting, pasting, glass making, photography, embroidery, floristry, 3D cardboard engineering, millinery, and the opportunity to pick up other new skills.
Judging the Art entries
Build a bath bomb Lush
Whirligig cardboard
Castle Fine Art – Still Life
Coaster making
As part of the creative celebrations, we also commissioned special sketches of Royal Tunbridge Wells town centre by local artists for an RTW Together colouring book. Suited to adults and children, free copies were available to pick up at a number of points across the town centre.
The Cove – bouquet making
CAMPAIGNS & PROMOTIONS One of the most critical objectives underpinning the BIDs function is in promoting the town to a broad audience. By purchasing advertising, print and promotional opportunities as a collective, we can punch above the weight one BID member alone could achieve.
We promoted the town by: • publishing 56,000 Town centre magazines promoting businesses across the town • creating professional promotional films for Christmas, Halloween, April showers, Cake Off and Art week • printing 10,000 town centre maps hand-illustrated by local, renowned Artist, Elaine Gill • distributing 40,000 Christmas Gift Guides across Kent and Sussex • investing in promotional advertising and editorial campaigns in publications, social media and press across Kent and East Sussex
EVENT SUPPORT The BID supports local events, festivals and markets which attract footfall to the town and generate income for our members. This year we provided financial support to a number of events: • Amelia Literary Festival • Tunbridge Wells Fringe Creative Arts Festival • The Pantiles Bandstand Event Company • Tunbridge Wells Puppetry Festival • Trinity Theatre • Local & Live Music Festival • The Pantiles Bandstand Event Company Christmas Markets • The Big Reveal • Pantiles Antiques Fair • The Forum • Tunbridge Wells Mela Festival • Denny’s Fest
£5,000 £5,000 £5,000 £5,000 £5,000 £5,000 £4,000 £2,900 £2,800 £2,700 £1,750 £500
FINANCIAL REPORT 2 April 2022 – 1 April 2023 The Board of Directors of RTW Together BID approves an annual budget each year to deliver the business plan. As a Community Interest Company (CIC) limited by guarantee without share capital, annual audited accounts are produced and available to any BID member on request, and are published on the Companies House website. The breakdown below summarises income and expenditure for the financial year 2022 – 2023. Income is derived predominantly from the BID levy payable by the BID members for the year to 31 March, any additional contributions are added to this levy and all income received is wholly applied in furtherance of the BID objectives.
Expenditure Deficit 1% Better Town 19%
Overheads 18%
Administration 2%
Accessibility 9% Events 22%
*This was from TWBC to support the Christmas lights campaign which they previously covered.
Mktg & Promo 29%
LOOKING AHEAD 2023-2024 Going forwards we will build on and extend our previous activity and I’m excited to say a lot has already been achieved or been planned in 2023/24. We will continue learning how we can ensure we deliver the most positive impact for all of you as possible. The following activities are some of the highlights of what we are working on and will be delivered across the year:• Promote the town and its businesses via a wide-ranging media, press and advertising campaign to local, national and international audiences including coach and tour operators, visitors via train, ferry and Eurotunnel and local tourists – London, Sussex, Kent • Offer free and discounted training courses and seminars for you and your staff • To continue to run and support events, markets and cultural attractions that bring more people into the town and create an environment staff and businesses can be proud to be based in • Run safety and security initiatives that protect shoppers and support our evening economy • Develop guides and resources to support efficient business operations • Improve the street scene across the town with lighting, decorations and public realm enhancements • Connect businesses together through networking sessions and online resources • Support organisations to save money through joint procurement and advice sessions • Explore how everyone can operate more sustainably in an affordable manner • Provide increased and enhanced statistics and research to inform businesses • Represent the commercial community and promote and lobby your interests • Celebrate and communicate positive news stories such as new business openings, new products and services from existing businesses, collaborations To view all of our activities in more detail and to make the most of the services available to you please visit our website; www.rtwtogether.com/business
2023-2024 - THE YEAR TO DATE
25,000,000 People reached via Visit TW Soon Campaign targeting local and foreign tourists
Over
65 shows and activities running across the Coronation weekend
Over
Over
200
£50,000
unlimited free training programmes offered to levy payers
120 sets of Christmas lights planned to decorate the town
given to 22 local events, festivals and attractions Over
230 hours of security patrols across town reducing anti-social behaviour
70,000 Quarterly guides across whole year listing 700+events and 500+ levypayers
15 Public realm projects delivered or in process (including lighting, planting and artwork schemes across the town)
650,000+ reached via Support Local campaigns with 200+ businesses listed
E: biddirector@rtwtogether.com W: www.rtwtogether.com Address: 52 High Street, Tunbridge Wells, TN1 1XF @rtwtogether
Royal Tunbridge Wells Together Business Improvement District
Royal Tunbridge Wells Together BID