‘Creating Attractive & Welcoming Streets’ (business plan response)
BUSINESS PLAN SECTION: ‘Creating Attractive & Welcoming Streets’ (page 15. £20,000/yr).
Here’s what Taunton BID are proposing, their headline ideas, and underneath collectively bullet pointed are some suggestions of what you may want to consider when analysing the ideas presented. You are of course entitled to provide your own feedback to and ask questions of any member of the Taunton BID steering group, and we encourage that.
The physical appearance of our town was cited as very important by many of you. You thought the BID should do something to improve the cleanliness and presentation of the town.
Improve the current services (of local authorities).
Dress the town.
Green Taunton.
Celebrate independents.
Floral Taunton.
CONSIDERATIONS
Working with the local authorities to ensure delivery of their services is interesting, and includes that vague term “Work with” again! So does this mean we’re making sure the council clean Taunton town centre as they should, or does it mean BID will also pay for extra cleaning ontop of what the Council do? Most BIDs pay for additional cleaning, Taunton’s last failed BID did, including buying cleaning equipment for the council. So what are Taunton BID proposing, they’re not exactly telling us.
Voting in a BID is actually an invitation for BID levy payers to take on council services like cleaning, and despite have baseline agreements that are meant to protect such services, as The 2019 British BIDs survey shows us, only 27% of councils were actually still adhering to such agreements.
Interestingly SWT Council recently announced it is increasing domestic rates 2020-21 in part to do more cleaning of town centres, so we actually have more cleaning on it’s way anyway.
Dressing empty shop windows is a nice idea and it’s usually done with full window vinyl images, but we do wonder what “Work with” means. It’s not very committal, does it mean BID are going to ask landlords to dress the windows themselves, or will BID pay for it and do it for them? How much does one average shop front cost? Are there any rates implications for landlords? How much have they budgeted for?
What seasons have they identified to spend street dressings on, again very vague? The main seasonal dressings tend to be at Christmas, so here we go again, the old Christmas lights saga! SWT Council currently pay for the town centre Christmas lights and Christmas tree decorations etc, as they also did before the last failed Taunton BID 2007-12, but eventually the last BID ended up paying for all the town centre lights. But again, whatever their plans and budget they should have specific costed ideas.
Here we go, the old BID favourite of hanging baskets! SWT Council already provide florals to a high standard and that should continue without BID trying to take over that.
There’s some working with the Local Authority again when it comes to green initiatives. Again, what are BID proposing, is this encouraging the Local Authority to do their job properly, or are BID proposing to pay for additional green commercial initiatives for BID businesses etc?
Finally, we haven’t actually been able to work out their plan for ‘a busking permit scheme through the introduction of more sustainable planting schemes.’ Please tell us if you know what they mean?!
Budget considerations. £20,000.
Given they haven’t really come up with any specific ideas and clarified what they propose paying for, we do wonder how they’ve costed this section to the tune of £20,000. Is it another number “plucked from the air”? Could they do what they’re proposing with less money or would they actually need more?
Final thoughts
Attractive & welcoming is essentially public realm upkeep, which really is the Council’s responsibility, so why should businesses be paying ontop of the rates they already pay to make sure it’s done better? It appears BID’s suggestions are merely superficial town window dressing ideas that haven’t really been thought through or costed, rather than something offering real change to increase footfall. Also, the real fundamental public realm change Taunton needs is coming as the Council implements it’s garden town vision, the plans for which are very exciting and involve significant town infrastructure improvements for the town centre.
Taken from the public realm design guide for Taunton Garden Town, dated January 2020. The council will be providing all this!
Click image to read our related article which provides more detail on the Council’s exciting plans for Taunton (opens in a new window).
Here are more of our business plan response articles for you to read.
Click on image to download our 8 page PDF booklet (opens in a new window).