Let’s hope businesses see the common-sense (From Bucks Free Press)

Let’s hope businesses see the common-sense

12:00pm Saturday 16th June 2012 in Your Letters

RE: Letter from Bob Crosby “Give us common sense, not another quango” (June 8).

I FIND it very frustrating that people read what they want to read without truly taking the time to understand the issues.

The creation of a Business Improvement District (BID) is neither a quango nor a district council initiative.

It is an increasingly popular mechanism by which businesses can work with others to manage their own trading environment, and to implement the actions required to improve it, for the benefit of both them and their customers.

Over 130 other towns and cities around the country already work in this way, with businesses voting to play a greater role in managing their towns. The legislation that brought about BIDs precludes councils from instigating this process or having any governance.

In fact, the process goes further by allowing the business community to monitor, and challenge where appropriate, Council performance on key town centre services.

BIDs are primarily about taking definitive action to resolve issues in towns that could not be improved solely through the public sector.

They are about targeting public and private sector money effectively and efficiently to make real change. Visit www.ukbids.org I guarantee that most of Bob’s reasons for not wanting to visit High Wycombe match with the reasons why a BID structure is now appropriate.

I guarantee that those places that Bob considers a real shopping and leisure destination already have a BID. We think that our Business Proposal is realistic and deliverable and based on common sense.

Let’s hope that the business community agree when they vote this month as without a BID this town might continue to give the Bobs of this world reason to venture elsewhere.

,p>Oliver O’Dell, High Wycombe Town Centre Partnership (HWBIDCo)

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