Salisbury BID wins a third term to bring improvements to city

By Peter Davison

7 November 2023

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Salisbury

Salisbury BID has won a third five-year term to improve the business environment in the city.

A ballot on whether to renew the Business Improvement District saw 92 per cent of respondents voting in favour, on a turn-out of 60 per cent.

The BID is responsible for a number of improvements that make the city more attractive to visitors and safer for businesses and residents. These include the 24-hour city centre CCTV, into which the BID invests £25,000 each year, a ShopWatch radio scheme via which retailers can alert each other to criminal and antisocial activity, a city ranger service, and access to economic and footfall data.

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Marketing activities include the Experience Salisbury website, Summer & Christmas What's On Guides, public art installations, the Salisbury Gift Card scheme, and the production of 6,500 promotional tote bags.

Keith Hanson, chair of Salisbury BID and director of recruitment agency Personnel Placements, said: “It’s really heartening to see so many businesses took the time to vote in support of Salisbury BID.

"It's an outstanding vote of confidence that strongly demonstrates the importance of the BID, our many achievements so far, and our aim for even greater success in the future.”

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The confidential postal ballot was conducted by Civica Election Services and the result was declared on Friday (November 3) by Wiltshire Council.

Salisbury BID is funded by just under 500 businesses in the city centre that have a rateable value of £12,000 or more. These businesses were eligible to vote in the BID’s renewal ballot.

Robin McGowan, chief executive of Salisbury BID, said: "We are grateful to the businesses who came out in such numbers and showed their support for the continuation of the BID. We thank you again for taking the time to vote and look forward to working with you over the next five years."

By Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country.

An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts.

Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.