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A NEW FUTURE FOR SUTTON COLDFIELD TOWN CENTRE!

 

Sutton Coldfield Town Centre businesses have voted decisively in favour of making the town centre a Business Improvement District.  Your businesses and organisations will invest more than a £1 million pounds in projects over the next five years, demonstrating your confidence in the town centre’s future, and its value to you. The money raised will be spent on improving competitiveness, attracting more visits, and gaining greater inward investment.

The Steering Group is pleased to announce that the proposal was accepted.  The results were:

  • Turnout: 42.6   %
  • Businesses voting YES: 86 (62.3%)
  • Rateable Value of businesses voting YES: £4,684,750 (58.4%)

Tony Kline, Chairman of the Town Centre Partnership, explained: ‘We are thrilled by the decision.  We are delighted that a clear majority of businesses have seen, like us, the value of a BID.  The Yes vote allows the town centre to begin a new, positive, and exciting phase of development. Consumers, employees and residents will experience a cleaner, greener and safer centre, with a more extensive advertising and events programme.’

What does all this mean?

We now have a mandate to set up and run a BID Company for the five years from 1 January 2012.  Over the next two months there will be a period of intense activity to set up the company, recruit and appoint directors and agree procedures with the City Council on minimum service standards and levy collection.

In early January all businesses liable to the levy (those businesses that were entitled to vote in the BID ballot) will receive bills through the City Council for the three months January to March 2012.  During April and in subsequent Aprils up until and including 2015 there will be an annual levy bill and in April 2016 there will be a levy bill covering the period April until December, as the BID company will have to reballot companies for a further term starting January 2017.

This newsletter is distributed to a wider audience than just the voting companies in the town centre, so in case you are unaware of the criteria for a business being levied by the BID they are:

  • Business within the designated area operating from premises with a Rateable Value in excess of £7,500 will be levied at a rate of 1.5% of that Rateable Value, up to a maximum levy of £5,000.
  • The business that is liable for the levy is that business that pays Business Rates.  If your business occupies premises where the landlord pays the Business Rates then the landlord will be liable.
  • Businesses that occupy multiple properties will be liable for multiple levies if each premises Rateable Value is in excess of £7,500.
  • Charities are exempt from the levy.

Setting up the BID Company

The BID will be managed by a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee, which has now been formally registered as Sutton Coldfield Town Centre BID Ltd.  Its board will consist of unpaid directors with a majority from businesses within the town.  We need the board to reflect as widely as possible the disparate business base within our town centre: large and small, retail and non-retail, multiple and independent, evening economy, Retail Core, Conservation Area and Birmingham Road.

We realise that not everyone has the time or the inclination to become a board member, but that many people in the town centre have an interest in its future and have specialist interests and abilities which would enable them to help us with projects and ideas we wish to develop.  Please talk to any member of the steering group.

The founding BID company board members are:

Tony Kline –Chairman of Sutton Coldfield Town Centre Partnership
Andy Jackson -The Mall
Andrew Burley –Burley Browne
Stephen Roberts –Robson Lister
Becky Dewsbery –House of Fraser
Councillor Philip Parkin – Trinity Ward

The Board will manage strategy, business planning, and day to day activity, through a subset of the board, the Management Team. The six founding directors named above will also act as the initial Management Team. The composition of the Management Team may be altered by the full board (meeting quarterly), and board members will be elected or re-elected formally at the AGM each year.

We will soon be publishing further information on the website regarding the Articles of Association, and the Operating Principles of the BID Company.

Membership of the BID Company

Any business paying the levy is entitled to become a Member of the BID Company, by confirming their wish to do so in writing to the Company. Membership confers voting rights (which may be exercised by proxy), involves no extra charge, and incurs a limited liability of a nominal £1. Details on becoming a member will be provided in the next newsletter and on request.

How to Get More Involved

Since the announcement of the successful ballot a number of local business people have expressed their interest in joining the board.  We are currently in the process of meeting with them and discussing the director role, its responsibilities, and their own interests and motivation in becoming more deeply involved.

We remain keen to meet with any BID levy-paying business person who is interested in being a Board member, or in assisting with an individual theme from the BID proposal.  It is immaterial whether or how your business voted, as we are pledged to act on behalf of all the businesses within the BID area. We are also very keen to talk to anyone, be they from a BID levy-paying business or not, who have an interest in the town centre and want to become involved in one of the BID themes.

If you want to know more, please contact:

Mike Bushell
Town Centre Manager
07970 885743
M.Bushell@birmingham-chamber.com