Leading the BID industry
Leading the BID industry
Welcome to the February 2022 British BIDs Insight. As ever there is much happening, both in terms of BIDs, ballots, events, policy and strategies for levelling up, cities, rough sleeping, and arts support.
After the Christmas break the ballot environment is picking up. We have had six successful ballots so far, for existing BIDs in St Albans, Sidcup, Be Richmond and InSwindon, and new developing BIDs in Fleet Street Quarter and Eastern City Partnership. We have a further four this month and then another ten in March. So, as ever, much is going on and we continue to monitor the data for British BIDs’ members in our weekly Ballot Watch.
In the policy environment we have at last seen the much-trailed white paper Levelling up the United Kingdom. This is a key document for those of us in the BID and placemaking community, and indeed a key challenge for the government who say that ‘Levelling up is a moral, social and economic programme for the whole of government’. The Levelling Up White Paper sets out how the government intends to spread opportunity more equally across the UK and uses Renaissance Florence as an exemplar. The white paper is long – 332 pages – and packed with detail, if not necessarily in funded solutions. The first 120-plus pages of the report is an extremely thorough analysis of how different areas of the UK are often vastly different, by productivity, pay and health, and are often wider than in many equivalent nations. It stresses that the UK’s “second tier” cities tend to underperform by international standards. At the heart of this new policy are 12 national missions - all quantifiable and to be achieved by 2030. These missions form the heart of the government’s agenda for the 2020s. However, the White Paper has already been critiqued for a lack of clarity on resources. Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, said, “The targets are largely in the right areas, but many look extremely ambitious – that is to say highly unlikely to be met, even with the best policies and much resource”. The 12 “missions” cover everything from healthy life expectancy to local transport links, a long but useful read for BID leaders. British BIDs has already suggested to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) that a useful quick win for the levelling up agenda will be to revive the BID Loan Fund that allowed many BIDs to get off the ground and deliver change quickly.
As a follow up, analysis of the £4.7bn already allocated under the levelling up agenda to date shows how some of England’s most deprived areas are receiving far less support than some of the richest boroughs. A further £1.8bn is still to be announced. The analysis brings together the four main levelling up funds for the first time. The Future High Streets Fund, the Community Renewal Fund and the Towns Fund have been fully allocated, while the levelling up fund has allocated £1.4bn with a further £1.8bn still to be announced. A total of £4.7bn has been allocated in England across the four schemes so far. The Commons Public Accounts Committee, which scrutinises government spending, has ordered Gove’s department to provide more information about how its funding decisions were taken amid concerns about a lack of clarity and transparency from ministers and officials.
Some very vital work by work by the Centre for Cities very much confirms what many BIDs have known but adds much new material, find out more here. The high street’s struggles existed long before the arrival of the pandemic. We know that more and more spending has shifted online. Covid-19 and successive lockdowns have forced shops, cafes, and pubs to close their doors and shoppers and office workers alike to trade time on the high street for time at home. However, the Centre for Cities confirms that the fate of the high street is not so clear cut. Some town and city centres appear to have weathered the storm of Covid-19. For other places, the challenge lies in addressing the underlying economics behind a lack of high street demand. The shift to online actually stalled when shops began to open-up again and by September 2021 spending in bricks and mortar stores had for the most part bounced back. Pubs and restaurants weren’t the hardest hit. Whilst there’s no question that the pandemic has taken a toll on the hospitality industry, with pubs, bars and restaurants all adversely affected, the biggest high street casualty has been fashion. There has been a significant shift to buying clothes online, a trend which shows no signs of reversing in most cities with in-store fashion sales remaining well below pre-pandemic levels.
Very surprisingly, the suburbs are not experiencing a boost at the expense of city centres. With more home workers spending time in their local area, British BIDs particularly speculated that the city centre’s loss would be the suburban centre’s gain. The data demonstrates that whilst people did frequent their local shops more, as a result, the suburbs were cushioned from the worst effects of the pandemic. With the exception of the retail sector, there are no real differences between cities and suburbs when it comes to sales recovery for sectors like fashion and hospitality.
In the creative and cultural arena much innovative thinking is going on, with a proposal that empty high street shops and derelict department stores should be transformed into artists’ studios and galleries to bring life back to city centres. Iwona Blazwick, who has led Whitechapel Gallery for more than 20 years, called on local authorities to offer the spaces at reduced rents to artists. She says it’s an interesting moment because it’s a question of whether people will want to go back to working in the city; we’ve seen one high street shop after another not surviving and whole department stores have disappeared. So, what is the future for those spaces?” she said. “And to me, there is an immediate tenancy standing right there, which is the artists”. They’re guaranteed, they’re going to bring with them a whole way of life, which brings a neighbourhood back into viability and into being a great place to live and work.”
Very much in contrast, BIDs spend much time working on the rough sleeping challenges. Councils in England have now received a £174m funding boost to deliver 2,900 homes for rough sleepers. The money will provide 'move-on homes' between 2021 and 2024 and will come with specially trained support workers to offer treatment for mental health issues and substance misuse. Eddie Hughes, Minister for Housing and Rough Sleeping, said: “One person sleeping rough on our streets is one too many, and more is needed to help people who find themselves in this terrible situation”.
As ever British BIDs continues to work with both our members and all BIDs on so many of these issues with our training courses in place-shaping, BID management, ballots, and the Certificate in BID Management and Diploma in BID Leadership.
Please do have a listen to the latest episode of our podcast, which can be found in all the usual places such as Spotify and Apple. Simply look for The British BIDs Podcast.
Professor Christopher Turner, Chief Executive, British BIDs
