MANCHESTER has recently created something other cities have had for years.
This is a central Business Improvement District, or to give the scheme its full name, the rather soppy, Heart of Manchester - Business Improvement District (BID).
The idea, to quote, is: ‘For a period of 5 years, focus on delivering customer service and promotional initiatives that aim to improve the attractiveness of the city and encourage more spending visitors.’
The BID area will have £1m to spend every year. It covers an area from King Street to the Corn Exchange, the east side of Deansgate, St Ann’s Square and the whole of the Arndale.
The heart of BIDland
It doesn’t cover the Northern Quarter, Piccadilly, Chinatown, Albert Square or Spinningfields. Those other areas remain managed by CityCo, which represents city businesses generally - as a membership organisation.
Confidential interviewed Vaughan Allen, the chief executive of CityCo, to which the BID will report.
You can read the full BID document here.
JS (Jonathan Schofield): Describe BID
VA (Vaughan Allen): In 2004 the government introduced legislation on the American idea of business development districts. This had been around since the 90s.
The idea was that a group of businesses in a particular area could come together and agree to put a proportion of funds together to form an independent company and finance certain things. We’ve taken quite a long time to do it.
Birmingham has several BIDs, they have a very strictly retail one, a very strictly nightlife one. The nightlife one pays for a group of policemen to be always in Broad Street. You can have different focus on different activity areas in the city.
JS. Why are we turning to a BID later than others?
VA. We did actually look at it in 2005/06, and I think that there was a plan then to do one across the entire city. But to get professional services firms, retailers, hoteliers, all these different sectors, and all these different businesses agreeing about what money should be spent and where is quite difficult.
JS. How was BID created?
VA. You create a business plan including information on the type of businesses that are going to be involved, the area (the BID) it will cover and what you are going to be doing over a five year period. Then it goes through a ballot, organised by the electoral reform society. If that ballot succeeds every business falling within the type of business description within that area legally has to pay over a proportion according to their rates, or whatever the levee is, into the pot.
JS. How does it work in Manchester?
VA. Businesses pay the rates and then there’s a levee on top which is based on their rateable value. There’s a separate payment, but it’s structured so that larger companies will pay more money usually. It’s not always the case, some BIDs particularly for independent type areas tend to have a flat levy of £500 or £1000 a year. That's the difference with how CityCo is organised which is a voluntary membership company.
BID budget
JS. How many businesses are involved in the Manchester BID area?
VA.We have around 380 retailers. This area covered is Manchester Arndale, through Exchange Square to House of Fraser, along Deansgate and then back up King Street, and then across into Market Street and up High Street.
View down St Ann's Square towards Exchange Square
JS. Given the state of the economy and the threats retailers face in terms of the internet and out of town shops was there much resistance to incurring more charges?
VA. We got two quite opposed views. One was, “Manchester’s working really well, why on earth would we need this?” The other one was, “We’re not doing very well so we can’t afford it”. The majority group was in the middle who saw that Manchester was doing well, but that things such as the riots showed we were quite fragile. Where we were going with this was very much about us wanting to develop events, attract footfall and to provide more money for marketing. But under the legislation it becomes a separate company which is controlled by the retailers, so it’s their money that goes into a pot they control. This is very different to traditional rates where they might ask, 'What are we seeing for our rates?'
JS. What changes will people see on the streets?
VA. A lot of our core work is working closely with the council to make sure that standards are right in the city. BID will provide us with an awful lot more information and the ability to say what’s going on.
One of the big projects is a hosting scheme of eight ambassadors. For these the main focus is customer service, but they will be able to report in, for example, that that corner always has litter in it, that bin hasn’t been emptied.
Having people around the main streets all the time will feed back into CityCo.
In terms of officers CityCo will have fewer, but because we will have this expanded group across the city we’ll have a lot more intelligence coming in. At the moment we’re looking at four or five ambassadors out and about every day during week days, and five to six on weekends.
The new wardens and their natty hats
JS. So these people will be completely different from the previous city centre warden scheme where you’d catch a lot of them in their red jackets smoking in car park doorways, hiding from the public?
VA. CityCo set up the original warden scheme but it was run out of the council. For various reasons, that became a mix between customer service, giving out fixed penalty notices, and enforcement - a very mixed message to be carrying.
The new ambassadors prime role is to know what’s happening in the city, to be able to direct people to things, to provide a general welcome
Uniforms are one of the issues: how to have them on Market Street without them looking like they are selling phone cards, whilst also looking smart.
We may not get that right first time, if we’re honest.
JS. Beyond the ambassadors, what else can BID deliver?
VA. The other main focus is around events to attract footfall. We know that there are certain periods of the year where there are dips that affect retailers and hotels.
So we are looking at a number of events at the moment, and within the next four to six weeks we will be able to talk about what those are going to be.
It may well be that one or two of those are going to be fairly big things, but also we want to look at how we can bring together what retailers may already be doing, or what is already happening in the city.
Everybody in the last two weeks of September does something around students, but we don’t do a huge campaign across the city centre. By having 380 retailers around a virtual table we should be able to maximise what we can do for those types of events.
Neil Dimelow's 'Home' series, sketches the BID area
JS. How will you be measuring the success of BID?
VA. If there’s increased footfall in the city which turns into increased return in the shops. If we are seeing more people wanting to come into the city, more people staying later in the city.
Then we'll have a decision to make over the success after three years whether we go to re-ballot with the retailers.
One thing we'll be looking at is summer.
We know that from the third week of July through to Pride (August Bank Holiday) is a dip period here, which in other regional cities it’s not. I know that coming from Leeds, that the Royal Armoury Museum used to have its best month in July.
Most August figures here dip, which leads to a circular argument between people putting things on and telling them that no one comes into the city.
What’s happened in the last couple of years is that the Arena’s been able to put on gigs in August, you have the Palace now putting on a big show during August.
You're starting to see a few things come through, so if everybody did something in August you would get more footfall coming in and that would encourage more people to do more things.
The Art Gallery and the Museum have been really great with this in creating events outside of their institutions.
We’ve done things in Piccadilly with Manchester Museum, and we continue to work with them. We’ve also looked at what we can do in the retail core over summer for family friendly stuff. It’s good that Manchester Art Gallery is opening late once a week (Thursdays). We’d like to see it doing more.
JS. Do the dip periods not balance with the successful periods such as the Christmas Markets?
VA. Christmas is good everywhere, but ours is spectacular, which is a result of the markets. One of the things we do know from evaluation work over the last two years is that high spending is attracted to events, and good quality events. The markets, not surprisingly, attract a huge number of visitors, and increase the stay time. While there is satisfaction, there’s also a change in the demographic at high street as well high end shoppers.
For instance, the impact of Chinese students and families is now being seen all over the entire city, plus there are Middle Eastern links growing stronger all the time. Our international profile and the impact of that means we need to be aware of how we deal with those visitors on the ground. We need to maximise this.
Enjoying the Christmas markets
JS. Does the BID signify that CityCo has failed. That we’ve had this city centre management company and it's not delivered and thus you have to turn to a new mechanism to get things done?
VA. CityCo is a membership organisation and our membership level is the same it’s been for the last couple of years.
We used to be 65-70% funded by two councils, Manchester and Salford, this year CityCo is going to be about 30 per cent funded by these.
We have built up other revenue streams and this is recognition that the private sector has a major role to play in the city. It’s been more about influence than finance. We’ve always had ideas from the private sector but we’ve not always been able to follow them through as we haven’t had a pot of money.
JS. So this gives you more strength in your representation of the private sector?
VA. This is actually about people taking responsibility, for attracting visitors themselves and providing money that’s going to be put back into those activities, rather than expecting the council to be doing absolutely everything, which in the current climate just isn’t possible.
JS. Will you be talking to the actual land owners about reducing their rents to get newer businesses into the area, or does that not play a part in the BID?
VA. Within King Street, as its part of the BID area, we are looking at making what might be empty stores there look more attractive than they do. There will be some involvement with the city council, but BID isn’t going to provide us with a new route into landlords.
We need to talk through some more tactical solutions. A couple of the shops on King Street are up for let and you look at them and think if I were to put my house on the market and left it looking like that I would never expect to sell it.
One of the issues in King Street is fractured ownership. Trying to track down who owns the particular parts is extremely difficult. It’s something we’ve been pursuing for a long time.
Example of how not to present an empty property
JS. How do monitor the city centre yourself and how will CityCo and BID work with the city
VA. Part of my job is going out and meeting people to find out what’s happening. Also my team and I walk the streets, not just in the BID area, and feedback what's going on in the Northern Quarter or Chinatown for instance.
We also have very good relationships with the city council and the police. We talk to senior people from nine to seven every day.
When you compare us with a lot of other cities, we are more engaged with retailer.
Howard (city chief executive Sir Howard Bernstein) will meet with the top ten or twelve retailers every quarter, and he’ll listen to what’s going on with their trade. That doesn’t happen in Leeds, Sheffield, and in other places.
That conversation with the private sector happens in a very different way in this city.
King Street: with its struggling retailers
You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter here @JonathSchofield or connect via Google+
