Creating a Better
City Centre For Everyone

Helping your businesses to grow

Vision

We will position the city centre as the major retail, visitor and leisure destination on the South West peninsula and a great place to live, work, play and study.

Mission

We will achieve this by working with our partners to create a more attractive and greener city centre, maximising the significant investment in our public spaces with more homes, extensive events programme and cultural activities to attract residents and visitors all year round and by day and night to help your businesses to grow.

We will deliver our ambitious vision through four main themes

These themes are explained in detail on pages 16 to 23. They focus on what is most important to our BID levy payers but are also designed to support the city’s wider strategies and plans, including economic growth and city centre living.

  1. The Plymouth Welcome

  2. Safer Plymouth

  3. Events and Marketing

  4. Business Support

Our key objectives

We will be the BUSINESS VOICE for the city centre and its businesses, working with partners to achieve the following objectives:

Realise the potential of our new public spaces with events and festivals across the city centre to attract more visitors

Re-invigorate the city centre by seeking inward investment and facilitating the development of up to 4,000 homes

Improve the look and feel of the city centre and ensure it is clean and well-maintained

Use culture and the arts to drive economic growth, including the evening and night- time economy

Support the regeneration of the West End of the city and nurture its independent businesses

Build on the success of our Plymouth Against Retail Crime (PARC) initiative with extra funding and more patrols

Support our businesses with a range of services to provide direct help or reduce business costs

Market and promote the city centre at every opportunity as a top retail, leisure and visitor destination and a great place to live, work and study

FAQs

  • A Business Improvement District – or BID – is a way for local businesses to work together in partnership with the local authority to tackle issues that affect their trading environment. Problems which are too large or widespread for any one business to address can be solved by all businesses coming together to finance and manage improvements. This can increase footfall, make it easier to retain staff, solve difficult issues and ultimately result in higher profits.

    Businesses decide on a package of measures they think their area needs and then vote on whether to pay for them in a formal ballot. If the majority vote yes, and those who vote yes also represent at least 50% of the rateable value of all eligible businesses, then all contribute. The money is then collected and the services delivered.

  • Businesses in hundreds of towns and cities across the country already benefit from being part of a BID.

  • A BID can deliver anything its businesses decide they need as long as it is over and above what the local authority already provides.

  • BIDs are run by independent, not-for-profit companies with a controlling board made up of, and elected by, representatives of those businesses involved. The BID Board meets regularly to oversee each project and to take the main decisions on behalf of all businesses.

    To ensure the Board reflects the wishes and needs of all the businesses involved in each area there has been extensive consultation and engagement through mailings, individual and group meetings and through this website. Through consultation businesses identified the problems and issues they all face, and agreed how best to address them. This has lead to the production of a detailed business plan which contains the details of how the BID will tackle the problems if voted in. Finally the ballot ensures a consensus has been reached. The money is only collected if a majority of those who vote agree with the business plan. If businesses vote ‘yes’, the money is ring-fenced and can only be spent in the way the businesses have agreed.