Leading the BID industry
Leading the BID industry
The New Year starts for everyone with the usual excitements and concerns – and for BIDs across the British Isles there are the same thoughts. Concerns over business rates and levy amounts, government policies in relation to BIDs and high streets, and the changing nature of the high streets and town and city centres we are looking after.
There have been no Ballots since the last Insight in December, but there are five coming up in the next few weeks: Linen Quarter (Belfast), InStreatham BID, Coventry BID, Bognor Regis BID, and Future Wood Green.
The New Year and the economy, much is currently being written on the future of town and city centres; the messages are complex and overlapping, ‘bricks and mortar’ is most certainly not finished and there are some great stories out there. John Timpson, one of the great bell-weathers of commerce says “Reports of dying high streets are well away from the mark, especially where the local authority realises the vital part a shopping centre has to play in the life of their community. Before academics, or indeed journalists, write any more articles about dying high streets and shopping centres that they claim are certain to fail, I suggest that they go out into the real world”.
As part of this story, Marks & Spencer is to open 20 large stores and create 3,400 jobs as part of a £500m plan to rejuvenate its presence on the high street after bumper Christmas trading. The company intends to open eight “full-line” stores, offering clothing, homeware and food, in shopping centres such as the Bullring in Birmingham and Manchester’s Trafford Centre as well as retail parks and high streets. A number of the stores will take over former sites occupied by the collapsed department store chain Debenhams.
Retail giants including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, M&S, Next and Asos have unveiled their Christmas trading results and despite the cost-of-living crisis looming large, the sector performed better than expected with very few posting sales declines. Retail Gazette keeps track of how the big businesses in the sector fared during 2022’s golden quarter and ranks the winners and losers and the data is available here.
At the same time, the number of independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland climbed to a 10-year high in 2022, as the book trade defied the odds in an otherwise brutal year for high street retailers. The lifestyle changes brought about by the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns were a boon for the book trade, as Britons with more time on their hands read more and sought out bookshops when they reopened. There are now 1,072 independent bookshops after the industry enjoyed a sixth consecutive year of growth, according to the Booksellers Association (BA). The resurgence followed a 20-year losing streak in which bookshop numbers sank to a nadir of 867 in 2016.
This is in contrast to some of the big online providers who are rethinking their income streams and closing parts of their business. Amazon’s reductions are the biggest by a big tech firm over the past year and the largest set of layoffs in the company’s history. The online retailer’s chief executive cited “the uncertain economy” for the move and said Amazon had “hired rapidly over the last several years”. The latest cuts follow a wave of redundancy announcements at tech companies in recent months, including 11,000 jobs at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, up to 6,000 at the computer maker HP, 3,750 at Twitter and 1,300 at the company behind Snapchat.
And the move to ‘experiential’ continues. Data suggests that live events are on course to defy the cost-of-living crisis. Soaring demand for must-go-to festivals and gigs, star-studded West End theatre shows and VIP tickets for events is sparking a spending boom despite the cost-of-living crisis. The live event industry, described as the first casualty of the coronavirus pandemic and the last to fully recover, is predicted to have a strong year in 2023 as people rein in spending on big-ticket items and holidays but still want a night out. Despite double-digit inflation and soaring bills, belt-tightening households are making sure they have enough set aside for a summer of fun. But it’s not going to be cheap.
All of this reinforces the view that we are now truly in the midst of interesting technological change that The Economist reckons is redrawing the boundaries of the firm, and that how and where we work is becoming very different . This is clearly evidenced in the return to the office after the pandemic lockdowns gathered pace in 2022 as hybrid working took hold at British businesses and employees headed to desks in suburban locations, according to figures from the workspace provider IWG. The average number of visits to IWG’s more than 300 UK workspaces climbed by 54% from January to November, as more workers split their time between home and office. Footfall at the company’s flexible workspaces has risen by 25% since June as office-based workers have gathered together more frequently during the working week. Tuesdays and Wednesdays remained the most popular weekdays for employees to work from the office, IWG found, and visits across these two days doubled from January to November. Workers are most likely to finish their working week at home and not attend the office on Fridays.
Policies the government is working hard to keep up with, a £1.4bn devolution deal for the north-east of England. This will bring seven local authority areas under the control of an elected mayor in 2024, Michael Gove has announced. The £48m-a-year deal for Northumberland, Durham, Newcastle, South Tyneside, North Tyneside, Gateshead and Sunderland on Wednesday came after months of negotiations over the new devolved area covering 2 million people. These moves from central to more local government allow BIDs opportunities to work at a more strategic level, with many coming together to plan and develop.
British BIDs events and training continue to grow and develop; with both the Certificate in BID Management and the Diploma in BID leadership refreshed, and a new group of five virtual workshops in communications joining the ten Academy Training courses. Further information is here and Shayni Langhelt is always happy to speak to people on Shayni.langhelt@britshbids.info or 07971 071921.
Professor Christopher Turner, Chief Executive, British BIDs
