Brixham Chamber of Commerce has formally given its support to the proposed Torbay Retail and Tourism Business Improvement District.
BIDs are an opportunity for businesses to come together, decide what improvements they want to make to their location, how they are going to manage and deliver those improvements, and what they are prepared to pay.
The idea of the Retail and Tourism BID is to enable Torbay to secure sustainable funding for five years to implement the changes that business owners would like to see happen within Torbay retail and tourism industries, which provide nearly half the employment in the Bay.
Gordon Gout, of Brixham Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber’s executive had agreed to vote yes to the BID, but he urged all of the chamber’s members and as many local retailers as possible to get involved in the process.
He said: “It is an exciting and equitable way to manage our own destination and destiny. It allows Brixham to be part of a set-up that will allow us to better manage and promote our own specific area while getting benefits from a larger organisation through extra marketing, promotion and management and receive our share of the revenue accumulated from the overall Torbay BID fund, and enable us to sort out some of the areas not being fulfilled by our own council because of the Government cuts.
“The chamber’s executive has agreed to vote yes, but we also need all our members, plus as many retailers as possible to get involved in the process and enable us to combat the Government’s continuing cutbacks. Mo Aswat of The Mosaic Partnership and Carolyn Custerson, chief executive of the English Riviera Tourism Company, have worked tirelessly in building up this situation, and as Carolyn says if we don’t receive a yes vote, the ERTC will almost certainly collapse, with disastrous consequences for the town centres across the Bay, in the form of a limited capacity of the marketing and management of Torbay, which will affect Brixham enormously.”
Mo Aswat said he hoped that the BID would be able to come up with a plan which meets the requirements of all businesses.
With some 3,300 business involved, it could be the biggest and most powerful BID in the country with a budget of £5million to £7million over five years.
A draft business plan will be produced in April for consultation and the final plan will go to a vote to all businesses involved in June or July.
For more information on the TRTBID, please see Chamber Resources
Original story by Caroline Abbott of the Herald Express
Reproduced by kind permission of author/publisher