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Initial descriptions
of BID concept
• Enabling improvement
• Creating opportunities
• Collaboration
• Business focused
• Enabling progress
• Offering value
• Offering a vision of what’s possible
• Enabling a quality city centre
• Less talk/more action
• Speedy delivery
Themes for service delivery
Agreed that potential BID services and projects
fall in to six themes, listed here with services suggested by participants:
• Cleansing
• Supply overnight cleaning
• Encourage a recycling culture
• Provide a waste removal service
• Educate on effective cleansing
• Suggest cleaning into doorways
• Generally change culture towards cleansing
• Maintenance of public realm
• Maintain historic statues
• Offer more recycling
• Use CCTV to identify offenders
• Improvements to public realm
• New pavements
• Recycling
• An ‘all or nothing’ approach to be adopted
• Have a uniform approach to developments such as window boxes
• Reduction of crime/anti-social behaviour
• Introduce day wardens
• More police security/visibility
• Introduce a crime partnership approach to tackling issue
• Have better preventative measures and approvals by current
committees
• Take steps to ensure that punishments fit the crime/introduce
appropriate deterrents
• Marketing to drive visitor numbers
• Creative signage would help
• Have quality information points
• Accentuate positives of city more
• Remove any confusion of messages in marketing materials
• Have better guides/tourist helpers for visitors
• Organise more street events
• Have ‘way finding’ signage
• Introduce a joined up marketing campaign for the city
• Public relations
• Accessibility
• Improved signage
• Offer clear guidance to visitors
• Enable more flexibility of parking for business users
Some felt that some themes such as cleansing should be delivered
by the public sector.
The power and funds raised by the BID affect the deliverability
of some of the themes, such as accessibility.
Some of the themes could be tackled by education and culture-change
(prevention) rather than cure.
There are two types of BID service/project:
• quick wins such as cleansing, high-visibility policing,
and possibly marketing,
• more strategic/long term projects (possibly marketing).
There were some concerns expressed by business about
council spending large sums of money on failed projects –
but BID could prevent this from happening by being legitimate business
body to consult with.
Overall, the themes were ranked in the following order of priority
for the BID:
1st – marketing
2nd – accessibility
3rd – reduction of crime/anti-social
behaviour
4th – improvements to the public
realm
5th – cleansing
6th – maintenance of the public
realm
BID boundary
The issue of businesses not being willing to pay extra for some
services because business rates should cover them was raised. It
was pointed out that a BID would only pay for additional services
and would be controlled by businesses rather than the local authority.
Even if BID delivers desired outcomes, smaller businesses might
not be willing to pay levy. It was pointed out that if a rateable
value threshold, whereby businesses with a rateable value lower
than a certain value don’t vote or pay the levy, was introduced,
this issue would be overcome to some extent.
There is nothing to prevent future BIDs in the city
centre, and each BID will be successful if there is homogeneity
in each – one large BID would lose this.
It was felt that businesses in other locations in
the city centre, such as the west end, may resent more money being
spent in new town area, but this would be overcome by the fact that
new investment would be raised from within the new town area rather
than businesses across the city subsidising the new town.
The issue of a lower levy for non-retailers/office-occupiers
was raised. It was made clear that this issue would be discussed
in detail further on in the BID development process.
The core area was agreed as best area for BID, due
to its identity and manageability.
The decision was taken based on the following agreed criteria:
• Suitable mix of businesses
• Offer value
• Size/manageability of area
• Area which has distinguishing characteristics
• Easily accountable to businesses
• Likely to be voted for
• Able to arrive at consensus
A levy threshold was seen as reasonable on the grounds
of cost-effectiveness and keeping the number of businesses consulted
and involved in the BID manageable. There were some suggestions
that the threshold could be higher than £25k for this BID,
and potentially lower for future BIDs, say in the west end and Grassmarket.
Identity and relationship
There was a general agreement that there is no need to include term
‘BID’ in identity of the BID as businesses will probably
find it meaningless.
The identity of the BID should communicate:
• Results
• Uniqueness
• Quality
• Architectural/cultural/historical character
• Clear geographical position
• Impact
• Private sector-led
• Simplicity and cost-efficiency
It should also take into account that there may be other BIDs in
the city centre so identity should not encompass the whole city
centre.
Must not include the Edinburgh Brand as this is too public sector
orientated.
A term like ‘Heart of Edinburgh’ reflects the fact it’s
Edinburgh to a national audience but that it is a specific area
within the city so would allow future BIDs in the city centre.
Brand is not necessarily used to communicate to customers/visitors
– marketing itself will do this, but will be used to communicate
something meaningful and positive to businesses within the BID,
in order to work with other partners and to attract additional funding.
Identity of the BID may evolve and change as it progresses,
but an identity should be established soon.
Model 1 – BID company set up
separately from existing partnership but partnership provides staff
and admin support to manage the BID.
Model 2 – BID company is a
subsidiary company of existing partnership.
Model 3 – Partnership becomes
the BID company.
Model 4 – BID isn’t a
company but an informal partnership managed by the existing partnership.
For the structure of the relationship between ECCM and the BID,
it was felt that model 3 would be inappropriate because the area
of ECCM’s operation and the BID boundary don’t converge,
and model 4 sounds unaccountable due to its informality.
Models 1 and 2 are more consistent and utilise ECCM’s existing
infrastructure and are therefore more cost-effective. There was
general agreement that model 1 is the most appropriate as is fully
accountable, transparent and clear. There will be a lot of potential
variations to it in terms of delivery of services, and questions
were asked about board representation. The board would be made up
largely from businesses in the BID area, with some representation
from council and possibly police, but it is not yet clear whether
non-businesses would get a vote.
ECCM’s relationship with the BID will be seen
as positive by some businesses and negative by others so this needs
to be considered when deciding on the structure and on the identity
of the BID.
Open discussion
Generally supportive of consultative nature of BID development process.
Businesses would benefit from a timeline for BID development being
distributed.
A vision and objectives for the BID would help businesses decide
whether to support or not.
There is a need also to focus on what council should be delivering
and what businesses could be prepared to pay for.
Examples of how smaller businesses have benefited
from BIDs down south would be useful.
The disruption caused by trams and by the St James redevelopment
makes the delivery of the BID all the more important. As well as
delivering against its business plan the BID can be tactical in
what it delivers and in lobbying once redevelopment begins. |
