The bowl is not ours to take

When asked to do a fireside chat at the ATCM Conference about 20 years of BIDs from legislation to now, it spun me into a pretty intense trip down memory lane. Thank goodness for my ridiculously full archive of anything and everything I have ever done! I think it is fair to say that none of us quite appreciated how ground breaking that period of work was at the time.?There was such a collegiate spirit.

The late 90s had seen a slowing of the voluntary corporate will to invest in places. We were good at delivery but unfair in partnership funding. The enlightened few picked up the bill for the many.?

Tangentially, the city property owners in London had been looking across the Atlantic at our US counterparts and were keen to invest here in a similar way. It was a sense of enlightened capitalism to take some responsibility for their invested places whilst enhancing their capital values (or at least stemming any losses).?

In policy terms during the Blair government we’d seen the Lyons’ inquiry on the role, function and funding of local government. Localism was at the heart of this review along with the concept of supplementary business rate (SBR). But SBR was not sitting comfortably with the business community, hence BIDs came to the fore.?

Led by business, for business, BIDs were out of the stable of a new Labour government characterised by a synthesis of capitalism and socialism where using markets for economic efficiencies was encouraged. So came the Circle Initiative, a pilot scheme for BIDs in central London using ￡4.6m of government Single Regeneration Budget to trial and document the learnings, and to feed in to the legislators.

So did we get the right legislation? Broadly yes but Government was keen to build in a ‘proof of concept’ mark into the consultation phase. In the early draft, a figure of 20% of constituents advocating for the BID was mooted but this never came into the final legislation.?Does this matter? Not really but inevitably it allows some to take a short cut if they are minded.

On a very practical matter, there’s been a constant criticism by BID practitioners of the short 4 ‘working day’ window for replacements at the end of the ballot period. Whilst this may be inconvenient, it is deliberate and necessary to prevent having a duplicate paper in circulation with the chance of both votes being cast and cancelling each other out.

The strongest aspect of the legislation in my view is the fixed term. Whilst nobody relishes the ballot it keeps us sharp and focussed on the current issues and makes us measure and demonstrate our impact. As for the biggest weakness, I raise it pretty regularly, it is the lack of turnout threshold. We must commit to true democracy and active engagement with voters if we are to maintain a trust and integrity in our industry. I believe we should have a minimum turnout of 35%.

We’re at 350 BIDs in 20 years. Based on the original lobbying we’d expected to see levies on owners not occupiers and clearly this would have given us a longer term investment approach. Instead with the levy sitting on occupiers, due to piggy backing on the base taxation of business rates, this led to a more limited shorter term view.?I referred a lot at that time to the likelihood of occupier BIDs being focused on ‘making the good places better’ because there wouldn’t be the strategic longer term view, or indeed sufficient funds, to regenerate failing centres. We’ve definitely seen some evidence of that.

And as for the?model creep. A BID is all about creating a joint bank balance for the place. About improving trading in whatever context that is, whilst reducing costs through economies of scale where possible. So in essence BIDs can work in any commercial environment for any purpose. BUT more recent model creep comes with red flags.?We should be about transparency, accountability and integrity, ensuring a genuine business-led initiative in a business community that recognises affinity to its place.

If you’re creating one of these emerging models across an entire council area, to fund shortfalls in the public purse, with no sense of business buy-in or affinity to place and you’re sneaking a ballot through with less than 20% turnout you’re really not hitting the mark in my view.

Looking ahead what are our biggest threats and what is there to come?

The vast majority of the industry are about making a positive difference to place. ?Our style of management and leadership is about enabling improvement and a sense of creative entrepreneurship, rather than tight management that stifles and controls. If we consider this question in the context of our critics -

Have we just been letting the councils off the hook? Yes a bit. This country desperately needs local government reform and in particular local financial reform and perhaps we’ve served to stave off that reform by plugging the gaps in the short term. But is that a bad thing in the absence of anything else, absolutely not.

Have we just slowed down the decline of our high streets? Yes a bit. But places are constantly evolving and changing and our creative style of management and leadership serves to manage these transitions, identify creative opportunities and mitigate the negatives.?This can only be a good thing.

Have we been pushing undue responsibility on to the business community? Yes a bit. But BIDs have been pretty instrumental in encouraging a new social contract with business to take a greater interest and responsibility in their locality. That’s not a bad thing, and something that was stripped away under the 1988?Local Government Finance Act when business rates were centralised. Should we be advocating for the business community to help themselves and should we be enabling that, yes absolutely.

So for some closing remarks - what next? There’s a really tricky juxtaposition between businesses feeling overburdened by inefficient and unfair taxes whilst being expected (and in the main, being willing) to pay more on top locally. For BIDs, additionality must remain critical. We must add value on the top, not just quietly pick up the problems and fill other organisations' gaps. Do we all need more funding, yes absolutely but be careful what you wish for.

I like to think about a cupcake.

We’ve been adding the icing and even some sprinkles over the past two decades, but we’re at a stage where we’re struggling to see the cake even baked. As BIDs we must only contribute some of the ingredients, and possibly hold the spoon, but the mixing bowl is definitely not ours to take.

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