It’s clearly a very bad investment for some businesses.

As we all know a business investment is putting money into something with the anticipation of receiving multiples by return, and this was one of the selling points at the Taunton BID launch on 16th July 2019.

There are however businesses within the draft proposed BID area, that despite contributing to the local economy employing staff and buying local products & services, receive no sales revenue from Taunton or the surrounding area. In addition some other companies such as specialist destination retailers may not rely on increased footfall that the BID wants to create. For these reasons such businesses are better off investing their revenues in other ways, just makes perfect business sense right?

But these businesses are “stuck” within the BID area, they would have to pay the mandatory levy, in which case it becomes nothing more than an additional unwanted cost for those businesses. Given the BID levy is effectively a private tax, this situation is unlikely to sit well with the payer, whom given the choice might even prefer to donate to local community good causes, rather than for the benefit of other businesses. In fact we’ve already had an offer from one business to donate to charity if either the BID doesn’t go to ballot, or it does and it results in a NO vote. If any other business would be interested in making a similar pledge let us know.

Ultimately the investment case will be different for each business, and we were looking forward to seeing a detailed cost benefit analysis in the Business Plan from the Taunton BID proposers. However, in September 2019 we asked Taunton BID to confirm if they will be providing any such information, to which they said no! It’s because they can’t!