Communities and neighbourhoods

Town centre management and Business Improvement Districts

Town Centre Management 

Town Centre Management is a co-ordinated proactive initiative designed to ensure that town and city centres are desirable and attractive places. Since its inception in the 1980s and early 1990s it has grown in momentum as a tool to mitigate the decline of town centres, as retail areas, to out of town developments. It has also helped to provide a managed response in dealing with the benefits and disadvantages that the growth of the night time economy can bring to an area. There is no standardised approach but, in nearly all instances the initiative is a partnership between public and private sectors bringing together a wide range of interests.

To ensure town centres retain their vitality and viability, and are seen as clean, safe and green places that are active and safe throughout the day and night, Communities and Local Government worked with 20 local areas in a programme designed to develop a set of action learning that help town centres partnerships to establish themselves. The programme, delivered and managed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, ran over two years until March 2008 and resulted in the publication of Managing Town Centre Partnerships: A Guide to practitioners, which demonstrates how different approaches work in practice.

Business Improvement Districts (BIDs)

BIDs are voluntary, business-led arrangements, where businesses in a defined area vote to pay a levy for additional services or activities beyond those already provided by local authorities. The objective of the BID initiative is to secure real improvements to business areas over baseline services. The BID model is flexible so improvements can take many forms. Ideally suited to town centres the model can also be applied to other business and commercial centres such as business parks and industrial estates. An excellent example of double devolution BIDs give businesses the freedom and power to make a difference to their trading environment and to deliver on their priorities.

Communities and Local Government supported a national BIDs pilot scheme with the Association of Town Centre Management to advise 22 BIDs on their development and preparation. The London Development Agency supported a further five schemes in London. This pilot scheme came to an end in June 2005.

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