Minehead Town Council loves funding from it’s BID!
At least Penzance Council admits it!
BID’s don’t like to admit it, but fact is having a BID in it’s area does save a Council money, in particular a Town or District Council given they tend to provide direct funding for discretionary services. We saw this with Taunton’s last failed BID 2007-12, we see it with BID’s around the UK, and as we will show you here, we see it happening right now in Minehead.
So when Taunton BID tell you BID’s don’t save Councils money, it’s yet another statement you have to ‘take with a pinch of salt’; another deceitful YES campaign tactic, another mistruth to try and get your YES vote. It’s not something they can promise you, and it’s wrong to try and reassure voters with such a false promise.
Read the following statements taken straight out of Minehead BID Board meeting minutes and Minehead Town Council (MTC) meeting minutes and draw your own conclusion on whether Minehead BID is saving Councils money at the expense of its’ levy payers. We even wonder if the Minehead BID levy payers realise the extent to which Minehead Town Councillors see BID as a pot of money sat there to try and continually dip into, in order to reduce its’ own financial demands.
Minhead BID minutes 17 Dec 19. Drains are definitely not a BID responsibility, it’s good that a problem has been identified but the BID public realm sub-group shouldn’t be investigating further and seek solutions; surely it needs to be pushed straight to the District Council for resolving?
Minehead BID minutes 19 Nov 19. The Council “hoped it would be match-funded by BID.” We hear about BIDs attempting to seek match funding, but in a reversal of roles seems the Council see BID as a match funding pot for themselves!
Minehead BID minutes 21 Jan 20. Minehead Coastal Communities Team (MCCT) funding has now come to an end, so does “BID wish to continue funding it?”
Minehead BID minutes 21 Jan 20. The Council “would appreciate the BID organising events for the six Saturdays”.
Minehead BID minutes 21 Jan 20. The Council are “to put a funding proposal to BID.”
Minehead BID minutes 21 Jan 20. So the BID are awaiting an idea of costs from SWT Council? Is the BID intending to pay SWT to repair and replace street furniture, rather than ensure the Council simply meets it’s public realm obligations?
Minehead BID minutes 10th July 2019. The Council “thought that BID could sponsor a replacement tree.”
The Councillor suggested “that perhaps the BID could become involved”, we wonder why, anything to do with helping the Council fund the CCTV? Even if BID declined this, just shows how Councillors might think, knowing there is a pot of BID money they can try and dip into (as also appears the case with some of the other examples we’ve shown on this page).
Minehead BID minutes 21 Jan 20. Public realm furniture upkeep, shouldn’t this be Council responsibility / costs?
Even before the BID company was incorporated, it had already decided to “partner” with the Council to fund the upgrade of the Parade electrical supply.
Minehead BID minutes 12 Feb 19. BID are doing the public realm in Minehead a favour by adding hanging baskets, but looks like MTC are happy to profit from the watering at about £3 per basket per water. We wonder how hard BID negotiated on the price, or whether they even went out to commercial tender to local businesses rather than just opt for and give the cash to the Council.
Minehead BID minutes 21 Jan 20. Minehead BID are clearly willing to help the Council improve the florals of Minehead, doesn’t exactly encourage the Council to strive to invest more does it? Yet again the Council are also charging BID for its Grounds Staff to water BID‘s baskets alongside their own. Given one can see how much the Council are benefiting from the BID you’d think there would be more “give & take”; well less take by the Council from the BID where charging them for watering is concerned.
Minehead BID floral baseline agreement
The effort that Minehead BID are making with floral displays also brings us onto the issue of ‘baseline agreements’; those council agreements that are meant to protect all council spending / services for a BID area, but are noting more than statements of intent so not worth the paper they are written on because a Council can do what it wants at will with no re-course.
Minehead BID do NOT have a comprehensive and detailed set of public authority baseline agreements in place, the ones they have are wholly inadequate and do not honour what was promised in the BIB ballot Business Plan. Take note Taunton, just goes to show you can’t believe everything you are ‘sold’ by the Taunton BID proposal, particularly when our BID Consultant is the same one who set up Minehead BID.
A copy of the Minehead Town Council floral displays baseline follows this paragraph. Note it is relatively ‘sketchy’, i.e. what does the £30k service exactly include and over how many years? We even wonder whether Minehead BID are ensuring their Town Council are delivering / complying with their floral displays baseline? How could they if they don’t even know what the Council is meant to be providing!
A note about our research into Minehead BID
Whilst we’ve highlighted many of the risks and negative aspects of BID’s with examples from towns across the UK, its only natural we also look “closer to home” with Minehead BID because;
It’s within the geographical area of and a partner of Taunton’s very own district council, Somerset West & Taunton (SWT).
The BID Consultant who led the Minehead BID development, advised on setting it up and led on producing their Business Plan, is the same BID Consultant we’re using now for Taunton BID (and for that matter the person who led development of the failed Taunton BID 2007-12).
The whole point of this article is not in any way try to hold Minehead BID to account, we have no remit, need or wish to do that, and we’ve seen much worse examples of other BID’s throughout the UK paying for things their Council really should. But it helps demonstrate to Taunton BID voters using a local example the very real risks of a BID absolving more responsibility for Taunton town centre from our Council than the BID proposers might have them believe. Once a BID gets in it really can do what it wants in partnership with Councils to save them money and start absolving them of responsibility for BID areas!