Feasibility study mistakes: Summary
We haven’t done a comprehensive survey of all the hereditaments (properties) within the proposed Taunton BID area, that’s what the BID Consultants were paid to do a feasibility study for, which in turn is being used as the basis for the BID proposal and Business Plan. All the BID voting and budget numbers we’ve been told so far are based on figures from the feasibility study, so you’d expect the detail to be very accurate.
The BID Consultants say they collected the data from both desk research in addition to fieldwork by way of a detailed survey of the potential BID area. However using the Governments’ National Non-Domestic Rates List 2017 (NNDR) together with fieldwork as the BID Consultants have apparently done, we have double checked just a limited sample of the street data presented in the feasibility study, and appear to found a number of discrepancies. If our findings are correct, then there could be fundamental flaw’s in the Taunton BID proposal that has been presented so far, for example voter detail and the annual budget of c£270,000 being worked towards.
Note - like the BID Consultant’s, any non-domestic properties with an annual Rateable Value (RV) below £5,000 have not been counted, as they are proposed to be exempt.
The following is a summary of our findings so far (together with links to further detail as appropriate):
The number of Somerset West & Taunton Council properties listed are 8, but we make the count at least 11. The “forgotten” properties appear to be the Whirligig Lane car park (back of old County Stores / Snap Fitness), the Coal Orchard car park (by the Brewhouse) and the public conveniences at Castle Green. If any of these don’t exist or have moved to private ownership, please do let us know as we will apologise for even suggesting these errors!
For Bridge Street - the number of properties has been overstated as follows
The voting property count should be 21, instead of 31.
The total annual RV should be in the region of £529,650, instead of £642,250.
Within the BID area streets have been itemised even with just one property, but several streets haven’t even been listed, some with even more properties on the street. These include Middle Street (2 properties), Lower Middle Street (5 properties), Whirligig Lane (1 property), Church Square (4 properties) and Magdalene Street (i.e. Citzen’s Advice Bureau whilst chosing to draw a line around Zizzi’s so as to miss it out of the proposed BID area).
Wood Street - Only the council car park has been counted, but there are 2 other non-domestic properties on Wood Street within the BID area.
Castle Green - Only the Museum has been listed but there are 4 other properties (not including The Castle Hotel, not sourced the RV for that yet).
St James Street – The number of properties has been understated.
St Paul Street – The number of properties has been vastly overstated (nearly x3).
Need we say much more?
We have only delved into sample researching some of what look like the easier streets, and are already amazed with how much our findings differ from those of the BID Consultants. In the feasibility study there seems a decent mix of both overstating and understating properties on different streets, along with not declaring streets with properties at all. We may have even found Taunton BID more estimated revenue, but that’s not the point here.
We accept that our “sample look” may not be 100% accurate, after all, unlike the BID Consultants we haven’t been paid public money to spend copious amounts of time doing detailed research as the basis for a feasibility study. But there certainly appears enough evidence from our limited look to throw doubt on the accuracy of the BID Consultants’ work, which in turn is the fundamental basis for the BID proposal and business plan being developed. In addition, if there are glaring mistakes like this being presented to us all, can we really trust all the detail being provided by the BID proposers? It’s all a matter of trust …….
Recommendation for Taunton BID:
Given that our limited sample research appears to demonstrate some glaring mistakes where properties in the draft BID proposal are concerned, we recommend that all this detail is re-checked. After all, it’s important that the best possible efforts are made to ensure the accuracy of both the voting list, and the business plan budget Taunton BID are working towards.