The Taunton BID launch County Gazette article on 18th July 2019 quoted Taunton BID as saying that “the problems of the 2014 failed BID are said to stem from the BID area being too big”. Is that really the main reason, or are Taunton BID in public again failing to be open and transparent about learning from lessons from the past?

From reading the history of BID’s in Taunton surely one can see it’s more likely to do with Taunton Town Centre Company (TTCC) not yet having won back business confidence of businesses following their all the issues that contributed to the failed Taunton BID 2007-12 which culminated in renewal ballot NO result in 2012? Read our article Taunton’s failed BID 2007-2012; there's no evidence Taunton BID have learnt lessons from the past. which clearly documents the problems of Taunton’s last failed BID.

Interestingly, behind closed doors the BID steering group have shared the following detail amongst themselves when discussing the last failed BID ballot in 2014, it certainly isn’t the full story and weirdly they blame the levy payers rather than how the BID operated 2007-12 (which is surely where the blame really lies), minuting:

“Lessons had not been learned from the previous BID regarding dealing with negativity, and ‘cancelling out’ those businesses who saw BID as a cost rather than an investment.”
“BID area was badly thought out (eg: The Crescent being included, where businesses weren’t going to see a major benefit, East Reach which is a tricky business community to convert).”

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From reading the evidence we’ve provided about the failed BID 2012-14, one can see that the failed 2014 ballot is much more to do than simply “too big an area”. The BID Consultant behind the current BID proposal did the 2007 proposal and she didn’t think the BID area was badly thought out back in 2007 when it was voted in, and the BID proposals for 2012 and 2014 also covered a larger area of 700-800 businesses. But instead they’ve made the area smaller with just over 400 businesses, and increased the levy for those businesses by 50%, read moire about the map in our article The Taunton BID map is biased and unfair.

A big area including over 800 businesses was good enough to be voted for in 2007, also for the 2012 and 2014 ballots, and today there are bigger BID areas in the UK. But evidently to win the ballot in 2014 Taunton BID had problems demonstrating they’d learnt lessons from the prior failed BID, and couldn’t demonstrate any value in the new BID proposal.

Clearly the real reason the 2014 BID proposal failed was because they had not yet won back business confidence following the prior failed BID, this is the real reason as opposed to geography. It’s just a shame there‘s no admission of this, and if they don’t see or admit this, can Taunton BID really be trusted again in 2020?

The real reasons why the 2014 BID proposal failed.