David Lepper

Labour Party | Brighton Pavilion

Business Improvement Districts and the Urban Renewal Agenda

Speech by David Lepper MP for Brighton Pavilion and chair of the national steering committee on Business Improvement District Pilot Projects at a conference organised by the British Property Federation, the centre for Local Economic Strategies and the Municipal Journal held at the Barbican, London on Thursday 28th October 2004

This is an important and exciting point in the short history of Business Improvement Districts.

That this point has been reached is really a case of success against all the odds, according to some sceptics. There were those who back in the early days said, “Come off it !” and drew the usual analogies between asking businesses to pay more rates and the natural response expected of turkeys when told Christmas is coming and volunteers are needed to help in the celebrations.

( OR for that matter -  the response some town centre managers get when they ask local small retailers to contribute to the Christmas lights in their street.)

Who in their right mind would believe that sensible, down- to-earth business people would go for the idea of paying more rates?

And yet some 100 locations across the country expressed interest in being pilot BIDS projects and over 20 of those pilot projects have now spent nearly 2 years preparing to put the question to be or not be a BID to their local business communities.

And a slightly controversial issue along the way has been the desire of possibly even more sensible and down to earth property owners to be part of it.

The history may be short but the idea in this country has already undergone a name change or two TIZ with a z, TIS with an S and then back to what they started out as in the States – BIDS. I’ll come back to that in a bit.

Let me briefly sketch in a view of that history in the context on what I believe is the government’s commitment to urban renewal.

Since 1997 the government has pursued a range of policies,  projects and strategies engaging with inequalities and deprivation especially, but not exclusively, in our urban areas.

There’s the work of the Social Exclusion Unit; the New Deals for the Unemployed; the NMW; the New Deal for Communities; WTC; Excellence in Cities to improve schools, Sure Start, supporting families with young children; Urban Regeneration Companies; Millennium Villages, neighbourhood Wardens; Neighbourhood Renewal; Regional Development  Agencies and the Anti-Social Behaviour legislation

 “One of the key challenges of the new century is to make Britain’s Towns and cities not just fit to live in, but thriving centres of human activity.”

So said Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in his introduction to Lord Rogers crucial report “Towards an Urban Renaissance.” In 1999 that report was the end product of the work of the Urban Task Force – set up by the government in 1998 to look at the huge problem, not only of reviving deprived city areas but placing our towns and cities at the heart of the economic, social and cultural life of the country.

Some might say –re- engaging with the original notion of urbanity.

I will repeat Richard Rogers often repeated comment – “People make cities but cities make citizens. The condition of our cities cannot be ignored because the lesson of history is that, depending on the quality of the life they offer, they can and will humanise or brutalise their inhabitants. The city, the town and the urban neighbourhood provide the framework for weaving together shelter, education, health, work and leisure, within the context of a strong participatory democracy, if this urban framework is neglected, people, and communities struggle and investment is wasted.”

Now, others might be more concerned with the relationship between property values and stemming the middle class drift to the suburbs and countryside and the drift by retail to the edge of town.

The visionary and the financial ways of looking at it are not incompatible.

Lord Rogers reported in 1999 making 100 recommendations on – design, Transport, Regeneration, Regional focus, Skills, Planning and Community Involvement.    

There was a fanfare for the report’s launch at the South Bank and debate afterwards but some of us began to wonder if the government was ever going to produce policy based on it.

That came the following year – 2000 - in the long-anticipated Urban White Paper – “Our Towns and Cities – the future: delivering an urban renaissance”.

The White Paper focussed especially on twin problems – urban exodus and derelict land, and its themes dealt with issues of sustainable development, good urban design, dealing with social exclusion and neighbourhood renewal – closing gaps to opportunities and the quality of life.
          
From the government came a commitment to work with towns and cities to get a better understanding of how they are already delivering an urban renaissance.
This led to the Partners in Urban Renaissance Project launched 2001 – in which the experiences of 24 partner cities and towns (including my own) formed the basis for reports presented to the Urban Summit in Birmingham in 2002. A number of reports were presented to that Summit including one from the Citizen’s workshops in which one of the top priorities listed by citizens was “Better maintenance and use of public places – this links directly to issues safety, crime etc.”

The key theme of John Prescott’s speech at the summit was sustainability and  “liveability”.

More recently, there has been the 2002 Local Government Act – the vital bit of legislation for BIDS – the 2003/ 2004 Sustainable Communities Plan and this year as part of the ongoing exploration of urban renewal we have had the Core Cities Report – “A tale of 8 Cities making it happen. Urban Renaissance and prosperity in our Core Cities” focussing on our major regional Cities Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield and  reviewing progress towards the creation of sustainability and economic prosperity.

And Sir John Egan’s Review of Skills in sustainable communities. 

Now I don’t claim that this is an exhaustive summary of the government’s engagement with the themes of urban renaissance and renewal, but I provide it as a back drop against which the idea of BIDS has been espoused and developed.

From that background I want to draw out what seem to me to be two key themes. The democratisation of structures by which services are delivered and linked to that partnership working and local involvement in local action.

Two key texts are firstly from the statement by Pasquall Maragall,the Mayor of Barcelona at the time of the 1992 Olympics statement at the start of the Rogers Report - 

“The best way to solve some of our global problems is breaking them down analytically into local ones. Not because local is “easier”. Not at all, but because the roots of disenfranchisement, hate and misery always have local roots.” 

And secondly from the consultation paper on the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and Local Strategic Partnerships in October 2000  “…the effectiveness of core public services in deprived neighbourhoods is compromised by their failure to work with each other, with local people and with organisations from other sectors… the impact on services at the neighbourhood level is rarely co-ordinated, despite the huge potential advantages of doing so, and residents’ voices are often unheard and ignored.”

What has developed in fact are a number of partnerships sometimes strategic, sometimes for the delivery of services – Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships, Learning Partnerships, Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, Health Action Zones, Local Agenda 21 Partnerships, Sure Start, Community Legal Service partnerships and Local Strategic Partnerships.

At the heart of Neighbourhood Renewal and New Deal for Communities Schemes is local resident management in which the council and statutory partners are just that – partners.

Well what is the place of BIDS in all of this?

The Town Centres Movement in this country has a bold 15 or so year history of partnership between the Private and public sector and the Association of Town Centre Management has a proud history of promoting best practice among its members.

My own knowledge of it grew from the day when, as the chair of Brighton Council’s Economic Development Committee, a Council officer casually said to me at the end of a meeting in the late 1990s “By the way Marks and Spencer say they’ll put up the cash for half a town centre business liaison officer for a couple of years. Think we can find the rest of the money from somewhere?”

We did. And from that for my city came 10 years later a City Centre Business Forum and now a City Centre Manager.

The pattern was being repeated in locations large and small across the country.
Clearly this bringing together of agencies, of the public and private sectors fits this strategy of local involvement to solve local problems.

Making places safer, cleaner and greener is good for citizenship and for footfall.

But often these schemes existed in an ad hoc way.

Town Centre Management schemes – involving public and private sector partnerships with private and public sector funding flourished, but could often depend upon the interests of a local store manager for instance, whatever part this form of corporate social responsibility might play in the policies of the parent company.

Or they might depend on the budgetary constraints from one year to the next of the local council.

The argument of the ATCM was that town centre management is too important for that kind of ad hoccery and  needed a statutory basis in local government law to create the stability, the sustainability and the confidence which participants needed if they were to asked to shell out good money.
 
Pioneers like Alan Tallantire – former Chief Executive of the ATCM - looked westward to the United States where the Downtown Association was promoting just such an approach to urban renewal with a statutory basis in local taxation.

By the early part of this century there were some 1400 BIDS in the US ranging in size from a city block to a major city centre and, at a conservative estimate adding an annual billion to improvement of the public realm.
Some would claim them to be at the heart of reducing urban crime and anti social behaviour.

Some examples

From 1995-2000 the Philadelphia City Centre BID’s security programme showed a sustained increase of 20% in people who felt safe most of the time and a decrease in those who didn’t. It generated .3 million for area based services and improvements.

In Washington DC, the Downtown BID showed, over the same 5 year period a 50% decrease in office vacancies, a 6% increase in hotel occupancy and a 3 fold increase in the numbers of people visiting for events. Coupled with this went a community safety programme showing a 28% reduction in serious crime, thefts from cars down 71% and pick pocketing down 50%

The Grace Building BID in New York showed a rise of .2 million in the building value.

No wonder property owners like the idea of BIDS.

Bryant Park was transformed into a public amenity generating an extra .8 million in concessions and sponsorship.

Elsewhere in NY City the Downtown Alliance area saw a 10% drop in commercial vacancies, the number of high tech companies in the area more than doubling to 700, an anti graffiti programme, and improved police presence, a community safety officer, three supermarkets where previously none would locate and 115 store fronts redesigned.

Local decisions, about what people want for their area, locally managed and financed from local taxation.

Getting that legislative backing stemmed from the opportunities for lobbying following Lord Rogers Report by the ATCM, other professional organisations and the Cross Party Group on Town Centre Management which I chaired in Parliament.

Rogers paid tribute to theTown centre management Movement and in the section of his report on making Towns and Cities Work recommended the setting up if TIZs Town Improvement Zones – and said they should have basis in legislation.

The theme was taken up in the Urban White Paper – but TIZs had become Town Improvement Schemes – TISs with an “s” which of course Microsoft spell checks would probably automatically turn back to a Z.

In 2002 the Green paper on Local Government Finance proposd a supplementary business rate to fund, among other things, town centre improvements. But to levy the rate the council would neeed the consent of the business community.

 By the time the Local Government Bill 2002 came along our special Atlantic relationship ensured we were no longer in a TIZ or a TIS – but back where we started with Business Improvement Districts.

While legislation was going through Parliament ODPM gave ATCM the task of nurturing a number of pilot projects in the hope that they would be in a position to take advantage of the legislation almost as soon as it was finalised by having reached the stage where they could with confidence consider balloting their local business rate payers.

It’s good that that was the approach taken.

The legislative process is a slow one. The Bill became an Act last year but the regulations about ballots etc weren’t agreed until September this year, meanwhile, BIDS Project Manager Jacqui Reilly and her team have been doing the business with advice, support, study visits etc for the Pilots.

We will hear more about the direct experiences of those involved from other speakers today.

To sum up.

Why are BIDS important to an Urban Renewal Strategy ?

They provide –

Local solutions to global problems

Better citizenship, participatory democracy.

Enhanced footfall and Money in the Bank.

Whatever justification you like, you pays your money and you takes your choice.