Lack of transparency over financials is a worry again.

12th September 2019 - Q&A with Taunton BID.

Despite being asked since July 2019, Taunton BID have so far declined to make public the amount of TDBC / SWT Council funding for the vote YES campaign. But from our own research we have confirmed that this Council funding figure is £45,000.

Given that Taunton BID could have secured additional sources of funding and that the Taunton Chamber of Commerce are also using their own resources to propose the BID, the direct and indirect funding costs are likely to be more than this £45,000 figure. It’s not cheap developing a BID, with costs in the main going on a BID Consultant and an extended marketing & PR campaign in order to “buy” YES votes through selling their vision, whether it can be delivered or not.

What we suggest is wrong is that Taunton BID are choosing not to be transparent by openly sharing their BID budget and sources of funding, despite having taken £45,000 of public money from the Council without much justification (and yet Taunton BID say no more Council money is available for Taunton!). This is important because a documented problem of the failed Taunton BID 2007-12 was a lack of transparency, including of financial records; looks like Taunton BID have learnt nothing and are just starting the same way again!

Amount of tax-payers money aside, given their funding Taunton BID also have the audacity not to disclose that SWT Council is also behind the BID scheme, which is yet another demonstration of their lack of integrity and reputational problems.

Councils have a vested interested in getting BID businesses to invest more money in their area through an additional business rate, so in a way you can see why SWT Council would invest (or rather gamble) £45,000 in the hope the businesses will vote to pay in £1.3mn over 5 years. But the manner in which it has been given is also alarming and begs more questions about the integrity of Taunton BID and the Council Executive Decision process for approving the Taunton BID funding. We’ve scrutinised one of the Council funding decisions, see our article Council funding scrutiny: Are Taunton BID deceiving the Council & businesses?

The key take-away from all this is demonstration of yet another lack of openness and transparency by Taunton BID, this time about their financials. Considering the amount of public money they’ve been given, why on earth are they reluctant to share this information? When you consider this along with demonstration of their mistruths and lies, it becomes clearer by the day how BID’s operate, and why given their reputational problems the last Taunton BID failed.