Lots of power for a few people, with a lack of financial transparency & accountability.
If Taunton BID is voted in and set up, it will be operated by a newly incorporated not-for-profit Limited Company, controlled by a Board of Directors who are a few willing volunteers from the voting businesses. For day-to-day running of the BID, the company is likely to employ a BID Manager (we’ll find out when the business plan is released), effectively a Town Centre Manger for Taunton.
This all sounds great in practice, but this is where the problems with running BID’s really start (and end). Voting a BID in might be the easy part, but making sure the company can deliver on it’s promises is a totally different story. This is where we really will be throwing the dice, a handful of people with the delegated power of all 400+ business, with the freedom to spend £1.3 million over 5 years, that isn’t subject to the governance of local authorities, nor the Freedom of Information Act or local government Ombudsmen, not even an obligation to post full audited accounts.
Even the last failed Taunton BID 2007-12 experienced a lack of financial transparency, and this is what Taunton Deane Borough Council reported in 2012. Accounts aside, clearly it was also felt that the Management Board needed to be refreshed as they were’t doing a good job; governance problems!
With exactly the same organisational structure, checks and measures we could be setting up in 2020, Taunton Town Centre Company Limited that operated the Taunton BID 2007-2012 is an example of how poorly run such a company can be given the reputational and lack of financial transparency problems it endured. Just read our article “Not much evidence Taunton BID have learnt lessons from the past” and you’ll see. Ultimately the running of the BID will only be as good as the people running the BID company, it’s the same for any company, as business people we all recognise this. 2007-2012 they had 5 years and a Board of Directors to identify and fix any operating problems, but they still couldn’t in order to keep the confidence of the BID businesses (and the Council), can we really risk the same happening again? This is if over 5 years we can even raise and maintain a first class and active Board. At the time of writing, Bangor BID is even experiencing a lack of interest by businesses to serve on their own BID Board, which means the BID could be tendered out to external management companies. Bet Bangor voters didn’t identify that as a risk or see that one coming!
“The intention of a Business Improvement District was for local businesses to improve their situation together. Not for a small minority to make unilateral decisions affecting hundreds of others.” - KAREN MCROSTIE, AUTHOR OF AN INDEPENDENT GUIDE TO BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICTS.
Click on image to read the Independent article.
The Department of Communities and Local Government BID regulations are woefully inadequate and have allowed a culture of lack of BID accountability and transparency to run rife throughout the UK with no independent regulator to oversee this growing power base of privatisation of services to our communities. Just read the Articles of Association of a BID company such as Minehead and you’ll see the extensive powers they grant themselves, including for example the power to gamble BID funds on the stock markets if they so wish. The 6-10 ish Taunton BID Directors really would be given carte-blanche to run the BID as they want on behalf of the c400+ businesses, spending the £1.3mn pot of cash as they feel fit, with no legal or other official re-course, perhaps just an AGM where voter opinions can be heard, but even then they don’t have to be acted upon.
Ultimately an unaccountable private limited BID company ran by a few people makes all the BID spending decisions, not all the businesses! As the above Independent article and the following articles demonstrate, given a lack of financial accountability BID companies get away with, things can easily go wrong and there’s very little that can de done about it! Do we really want to risk handing our hard earned money over to a private company like this?
Click on image to read the full article.
Click on image to read the full article.
Rugby BID had £500k unaccounted for over 10 years!
Click image to read full article.
Click image to read full article.
Lack of financial transparency was one of the reasons why Chippenham BID was voted out by it’s levy payers in October 2019, just like Taunton BID was in 2012!
