Is a Business Improvement District right for your town? Case study - Camden Town Unlimited - Revive & Thrive

Are you considering a Business Improvement District (BID) in your centre?

With the very kind help of highly successful Camden Town Unlimited BID, we help you consider the basics.

What is a BID?

A Business Improvement District (BID) is a precisely defined area within which the local business community work together to collectively invest in projects and services that address specific issues and opportunities and improve the business environment.

How and why did you decide that a BID was right for Camden? - Camden Town has always been an incredible place to live and work. Just behind the busy high street hundreds of people are tapping away on their laptops, developing new ideas, new businesses and new jobs. Frustratingly, Camden is more likely to be associated with drinking and tourists, than with creative business. Camden Town Unlimited is working to change this.

It is a business led, private/public sector partnership that is initiated, funded and managed locally, that is committed to investing in additional projects and services and that is focused on creating an improved trading environment.

Where do we start?

Well, if you are just beginning to think about whether or not a BID might work for you, there are 3 questions you need to answer:

1) Does it stack up financially?

2) Are there enough businesses in the area committed to making it happen?

3) What difference do you think (or hope) it will make?

What is the vision/ambition for Camden Town Unlimited BID? How will it make Camden better, What do you want it to achieve? - Our vision is to position Camden Town as a global centre for the creative industries. We provide the opportunity for new businesses to work in Camden through the provision of free work and retail space. We represent the needs of the existing business community through leading campaigns on streetscape development, initiatives like the Camden Town App that strengthen local consumer loyalty, and establishing a radio link programme named CBAC (Camden Business Against Crime) where businesses are linked to police, wardens and CCTV. In delivering this unique BID offer we hope to achieve a shift in the area’s reputation, so that Camden Town is an international destination for arts, design, fashion, music and media.

Realistically, the starting point may be any one of these three, but you need to get the right answers to all of them before going any further.

It is probably fair to say that the actual starting point is likely to be a group of businesses realising that a BID might be effective way to improve the area they are trading in, at which point, the local authority should be in a position to help them work out whether a BID is likely to generate sufficient income from a levy to make it viable.

Watch the Camden Collective story & find out more about Camden Create Festival Tues 13th – Thurs 15th May 2014.

How do we do it?

At the point where some broad objectives have been scoped, the council is on board and there is a core of businesses committed to developing a BID (let’s call them the BID Champions), two or three things need to begin happening alongside each other:

Developing a business case
Defining the boundary and income levels
Firming up local authority support

Kit Malthouse, Deputy Mayor of London for Business and Enterprise, with Collective member Black Sheep Coffee at C/159.

The business case:

You may think you know what needs to be done and how a BID can help to improve the area you operate in, and this is a good time to start getting the buy-in of the wider business community.

What was the situation in Camden– was it on an upwards trajectory that you felt a BID would accelerate or was it on a downwards spiral that you hoped a BID would turn around? - A downward spiral, for sure. We were losing the battle on drugs and alcohol, and the anti-social behaviour associated with it. The cool factor had gone east, the markets were in decline. We very much wanted to turn it around. Through a lot of partnership working across sectors the drug problem is less of an issue, on the streets at least, which enables us to work more on the primary objective.

Produce a survey, send out a questionnaire, hold consultation sessions to really start to define what projects your BID might want to deliver. This consultation stage is fundamental to developing the business case, from which you will be able to produce a business plan or “Proposal”.

BID Boundary:

What geographic area will the BID cover? Draw a line around the area on a map and see how it looks. You need to decide if every business within the area will have to pay the levy (and therefore get a vote) and consider what falls outside of the boundary. Sometimes, the BID boundary will be an obvious and natural ring around a business area, in many cases, though, it will require further investigation – sometimes on a business by business basis.

The next step is to look at potential income levels – at what level will you set your BID Levy? Again, this will depend on a number of factors, and in some cases, a minimum levy or maximum cap may need to be considered.

These factors will inform your BID Database, a fundamental tool that will enable you to manage the BID process and communicate with businesses in the run up to the ballot and beyond.

Local Authority

In Camden, what were some of the issues you faced in making it happen? - “The task at hand was finding a common purpose to unite the business community. For us, it was policing and community safety. The truth is, businesses had been raising these issues for years and lots of empty promises had been made. We had to convince everyone that we meant business (pun intended) by delivering a vibrant articulation of a vision for something better.”

Your local authority will be responsible for issuing the BID bills and collecting payment on your behalf and is another vital component for a successful BID campaign. Moreover, in many cases, the Local Authority will also have property within a BID area, so is a levy payer and business stakeholder too.

CTU CEO Simon Pitkeathley with Mary Portas last week when she came to visit C/159 recently.

While local authorities operate in different ways, you will almost certainly need the support of the council at executive level, this will mean writing (or working with colleagues in the council to write) a Cabinet Report or similar which will inform the council as to the BIDs plans and secure support for the BID as it progresses towards ballot.

What happens next?

Once your priorities are set, the boundary and levy are agreed and the council is on board, you will need to go through a concerted period of marketing of the BID’s proposals, growing support of the voting businesses and refining the business plan right up until the point it needs to be published.

How have you brought innovation to the BID in Camden? - We looked at what businesses in the creative industry need to grow. A generation of entrepreneurs and start-ups in London are looking for affordable workspace. The Collective project meets this need in a new way. Free workspace creates a unique collaborative environment, in which we deliver business support in response to the needs of our users and brings fresh talent into the area for our members to engage with. In 2013 we delivered the first Accelerator programme specifically for creative businesses. This year we’re delivering a free eight-week course in coding the web. We have just opened C/159, a new creative market place for Camden. Retail space is free short term to creative businesses that need the freedom to trial their products without intimidating overheads. We have used a sustainable approach to design and build to create an open plan layout that incubates enterprise in a new and unique retail environment. Our approach to streetscape regeneration has been to do the legwork, then get the buy in, rather than wait for things to happen. We do the research, the consultations, then sell that vision to the local authorities.

This could take a good six months and should lay the foundations for a successful ballot.

You will also need to be preparing for the ballot with various legal stages to go through.

The BID Ballot

All eligible businesses within the BID area will be entitled to vote on whether they want to adopt the BID or not. For a BID Ballot to be successful, a dual “Yes” vote has to be achieved – the majority of those that vote need to be in favour both by number and by total rateable value.

Votes are cast by a secret, postal ballot, sent to every voting business within the BID area. Each unique commercial property gets one vote.

In many ways, this is the hardest stage of the process. You will have your BID champions on board and the wider support of many other businesses, but their votes need to be cast. For the period of the vote, there should be people out on the street every day making sure businesses understand what they are being asked to do and making sure they vote.

Implementation

Once the Ballot result is known, it can take a couple of months for the BID to start properly. Arrangements need to be made for when the BID bills are issued, and until the BID starts to receive income from the BID levy, it will be difficult to begin to deliver any projects (unless there are already funds in the bank).

What are some of the projects you have planned that will contribute to the BID? (and therefore Camden’s) success? - This May Camden Town Unlimited is partnering with the local business community to deliver the very first Camden Create Festival. Daytime and evening events will pop-up in iconic Camden venues both big and small, from the Roundhouse to The Hawley Arms. Industry workshops, avant-garde dining experiences and exclusive music performances combine to present a programme like no other. Camden is one of the world’s leading business communities – and we’re standing shoulder to shoulder to celebrate it.

This period is useful for establishing the BID Company (normally a private company limited by guarantee, but other models can be used), recruiting a board of directors and probably a BID Manager, registering for VAT, finding a home for the BID and communicating to the BID levy payers what is happening, how they can get involved and what the BID will do for them in the coming years.

And, of course, the BID can start to deliver the projects that businesses have voted for to improve the area they are in.

Where can I get support to get going locally?

This is a broad overview of the stages you will need to go through to bring a BID in your area to fruition. It is a hard but rewarding process, the biggest reward being the opportunity for businesses within a BID area to take the lead on and deliver real and lasting changes that affect their trading or business environment.

The Revive and Thrive Partnership is one of a number of organisations who can offer you professional advice and support. These organisations will bring a range of expertise in BID Development and Delivery offering workshops and on-going support to your partnership as you embark on your journey. They will also offer you help and advice on how to undertake surveys and questionnaires, arrange and manage meetings, consultation sessions and other events, write your business plan and work with your local authority.

With a little research you will find the perfect partner to support the key balloting stage of your BID, canvassing businesses, ensuring businesses take up their right to vote and beyond that can support you as you start up your new BID Company as well as help you to implement the projects that businesses in your BID area voted for.

If you would like more information on the support that Revive & Thrive offers please contact us

Many thanks to Camden Town Unlimited, the BID Company for Camden, for the additional words and images. If you would like more information on Camden Create Festival or if you would like to get tickets please visit their website.

Article by Matthew Powell, experienced BID & Town Centre Management practitioner and member of Revive & Thrive Partnership.

Revive & Thrive is available for your high street and community right now. Take a look at the Revive & Thrive Partnership, as well as Who’s Who, the Revive & Thrive Business Group and how to join the Business Group. Also see our testimonials and our free ‘Ask the Partnership’ service

Want to get the best from social media for your community, town or city? See the results that we achieved on Retweet For Towns Day and how the Revive & Thrive Twitter Service could deliver these outcomes to you today

For further information please contact us direct.