Nearly £3 million will be invested in Cheltenham town centre after Cheltenham Business Improvement District (BID) was voted in for a second term.
The organisation has won the backing of local businesses which fund it to do their bidding through an annual levy.
The BID’s second term is set to run from Sunday 1 August 2021 to Tuesday 31 March 2026 and will see it spend £2.8 million on Cheltenham’s businesses and town centre over the five-year period.
Alex Rose, chair of Cheltenham BID, thanked his team for its hard work and paid special tribute to the BID former director, Kevan Blackadder, who died earlier this year.
‘I’m proud to have been part of the BID for the last five years and am hugely grateful to Belinda and the BID team as well as the directors who all give up their time for the BID.
‘We also can’t forget the enormous role our friend and colleague, former director Kevan Blackadder, had in forming the BID and in leading so much of our success during the first term.’
As part of the renewal ballot, the BID zone has been extended and now includes an additional 250 businesses, which explains its increased budget.
Belinda Hunt, operations manager at Cheltenham BID said: ‘Everything we have done over the past five years, particularly in the last 18 months, has been done to support BID businesses and Cheltenham as a whole.
‘We are so looking forward to extending that support to a larger number of businesses.’
More than 300 businesses responded to the ballot, with a whopping 86 per cent voting for the BID’s second term.
With a new business plan in place, the BID will be focusing on four key areas – including business support; marketing and promotion; town centre events; and townscape enhancements – in its second term.
Originally created in 2016, the BID was voted in to represent and support over 600 levy-paying businesses in the town centre and has invested over £2.1 million into the town during its first term.
By Andrew Merrell
Follow SoGlos on LinkedIn and sign-up to the weekly SoGlos business newsletter for the very latest Gloucestershire business news stories.
