Quick notes from the 2022 BID ballot

It's been a long year, dominated by BID ballots. It's driven a snowplough through holidays, breaks and pretty well every project we've put on this year. But, at the end of it all, we have a successful ballot for a new (much expanded) city centre BID, AND for the country's first Accommodation BID, using the BID legislation to deliver an occupancy-based levy. So ￡6m or so coming into the city centre every year till 2028, going into events, marketing, promotion and some basic services.

There have been a lot of lessons, most of which I've probably already forgotten, and some of which (running a postal ballot during the biggest postal strike in thirty years) we couldn't control. But here are a few. Remember that BIDs in city centres are often a very different beast to those in market towns or suburban areas, so *health warning inserted*. Let's start with the good stuff..

1. A lot of the basic recommendations on BID campaigns over the past decades just don't apply anymore. Literally no-one asked about cost. No one. We went with a higher levy level (and, in light of the rates revaluation, should have gone higher). There should be no 'upper limit' for the levy. And thanks to the rates changes, the actual charge in ￡s is more important than the percentage.
2. Its always been de rigeur to do a glossy business plan/proposal. We did LOTS of bits of print around the 'draft' business plan, but the main priorities were set back in February by the board. As we didn't go to nationals (see below) we didn't really need that final piece of print. In retrospect we'll use that glossy plan as a piece of comms to introduce the BID to the new levy-payers, and next time will think more about how we introduce ourselves AFTER the BID ballot.
3. We went totally local. This might be a city centre thing. Some of this we were forced to do because of the way the council ran the ballot (see below), but we totally ignored what little info we could glean on national voters. We asked managers to clear their lines with upper management, but on the few occasions where we HAD a name at national level, even senior local managers couldn't get in contact with them. The local managers are the ones who know your work. I'm not going to say that some might have voted without checking, or knowing national views were different to their own, but...well, you know...
4. Retail (and hospitality to some extent) is hurting. So many layers of management have been taken out, the message we got from a lot of retailers was that the BID was literally the only regular face they ever see--there are no area managers anymore, council officers are rarer than they once were. The BID provides the interaction, information, communication that managers used to get from lots of layers around them. Being a sole manager (and often a sole employee opening up and closing) is very lonely. BIDs can help.
5. If you're in a renewal, the BID levy is already baked in, and probably dealt with at a national level. So many local voters asked whether they 'already paid' the fee and then shrugged in a 'no brainer' way . The flip is that new BIDs might struggle.
6. If you've got a lot of empties, spending time to build up relationships with landlords and property agents is vital. We spent SO much time trying to persuade (the relatively small number of) landlords that it was in their interest to support the BID--that our activities make the likelihood of renting their properties out much greater--at which point the cost gets passed on to the tenant, of course. Having these relationships long before you go to ballot will save so much time.
7. We had a war-chest coming out of covid to invest in the city centre. So the past year has seen us spend an extra 50% on events, cleansing and promotion. The last three months has seen us embark on a big campaign to re-paint lampposts, bins and bollards across the city centre; every event was 25-50% bigger than previous years. We poured everything into the last few months. Next time, we'll start saving early to do the same. (of course, the extra events and cleaning has also brought more people into the city centre than any time since 2019, its helped get weekend footfall and hotel occupancy back up ABOVE 2019 figures, so this is not an entirely cynical exercise)
8. We controlled the positive vote. The final positive vote was within ten either way of our positives who had been hassled, cajolled, persuaded and hassled again to check whether ballots had arrived (mostly they hadn't), to organise replacements and use proxies and then to ensure they got down to Civica. We gave up on any negatives or potential negatives very early in the process. We knew if our votes came in, we would win. But it meant knowing everyone and tracking EVERYTHING.

And then the negatives...

1. Business rates--the revaluation came DURING our campaign. IF we'd known the level of impact (about 20% reduction in rates for retail), we'd have gone with a higher levy, because (point 4), the actual cash amount is already baked in. This is going to be huge for BIDs in smaller areas, and should be an absolute priority for the BID organizations--there needs to be some bridging funding for BIDs that will, from April, lose 25% or more of their funding.
2. As we re-discover with every ballot, the BID Regs aren't fit for purpose. They don't reflect how businesses work, what businesses are, or how inefficient the postal services are. Which leads to...
3. We need to take local councils out of the process. Very early on, Manchester council decided that they would ignore the 'Technical Guidance to Local Authorities' on the DLU site--the official government advice on how to run ballots--and try to re-invent the wheel. Cue ten months of arguments as it became increasingly obvious that there was a reason why that guidance had been put together. They held to the letter of the Regs, which meant no information came from the BID Proposer at all (hence having to go local--ballots went to the hereditament address in the name of the company listed as a the ratepayer, which doesn't help the postie at all...). Imagine doing a general election where the electoral list has to be re-made from scratch each time. Without the hassling process we ran, the result from the post would have been 12 to 3--a 3% turnout.
4. All of which reached a nadir as we became the only BID ballot in 2022 to take more than 24 hours to get its result....
5. We brought in the office sector for the first time. Will somebody please tell me how they engage with this sector!??? We wrote and invited people to things and got landlords to distribute leaflet after leaflet and almost nothing came back (and so extra big thanks to those office companies who DID respond and want to be involved in the future of the city centre!)

So, tl: dr, the ballot landscape is changing a lot, just as the retail and hospitality landscape is changing. Local management, local contacts, are ever more crucial (especially with offices!); the ballot process is still a nightmare, and the regs need to change.