Current BID Project Activity

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April 2021 Update

The first quarter of this year has been incredibly jam packed. We appointed a new BID Officer at the back end of December and started properly in January 2021. We would like to welcome Aneesa McGladdery to the team who said:

“I am incredibly excited to be joining the BID team supporting the Colne businesses in my own hometown. I have developed many skills over the years in my hospitality sales roles that will enable me to me engage and build relationships with the businesses, put on some amazing events and work in collaboration with a cross section of stakeholders across the town, borough and county to achieve the best results we can for the high street. This past year has been challenging with lockdowns and restrictions due to Covid-19 but I hope to bring a fresh outlook into the town and the businesses in readiness for when we re-open the high street safely.”

We having been working towards meeting the 4 objectives detailed in our BID Business Plan, here is what we have achieved over the past 4 months:

Pride

We performed a litter pick on Saturday 10th April in readiness for the first milestone date for non-essential retailers (12th April), over 20 volunteers collected 40 bags of litter and Unique Clean came along and to help clean up the high street. Another date has been put in the diary for 15th May, in readiness for the hospitality businesses opening on the 17th May.

Fresh Lick of Paint: We now have 9 confirmed applications and 2 of those have had the work completed. To apply for a Fresh Lick of Paint email BID Officer Aneesa McGladdery on manager@colnebid.co.uk

Former Zebra’s & Higgin Chamber: These 2 derelict buildings have been wrapped in our bright and colourful Come to Colne branding, which gives a wonderful sense of arrival into town.

Street Cleaning and Chewing Gum Removal: We called upon Unique Clean to power wash and remove chewing gum from pavements in front of businesses on Skipton Road and Hartley Square – we will pledge to do a planned out area every year

Promote

The Virtual High Street was a roaring success and we even made the Daily Mail! CLICK HERE TO SEE THE ARTICLE

In the meantime, we have re-commenced our adverts in Colne Life and Northern Life. We are also looking at what events we can host in the town once the restrictions have been lifted properly. Social Media has been our best friend during lockdowns – this has been our way of communicating with the public and ensuring that people remember we are still here and ready to welcome people back!

Protect

This is an area we have really focussed on this year:

Colne Youth Action Group or ‘CYAG’: We have pledged our support to this newly formed charity. The core focus of their work is to provide activities for young people across the town provided by appropriate organisations. Together with the neighbourhood policing team some of these activities will be connected with citizenship and avoiding anti-social behaviour. Learn more about the charity here: https://cyag.org/

CCTV Enhancement: We have paid for a new CCTV camera and the installation to enhance the current network in town – plus is a hot spot area and will help the police when investigating crimes within the town.

Colne Shopwatch: The BID has launched a Shopwatch scheme for our retailers in the town, similar to pubwatch (or as we know it in Colne CAND), the BID has funded the 1st year of an app called Schemelink. This app is GDPR compliant and with the Neighbourhood policing team also having access; this will support the retailers who experience prolific shoplifting. BID Officer Aneesa visited businesses with PCSO Ivan Hartley and PCSO Ailsa Gill to onboard members to the app and generally promote the scheme across town. A meeting will be put in the diary for May.

Partnership

Aneesa has been working to create partnerships across organisations at town level, borough level and county level. We have recently become members of Marketing Lancashire too, which also helps us to work towards our ‘promote’ objective. A Facebook Group for businesses as also been created, for the purpose of networking amongst the businesses. To join the group, CLICK HERE

Current BID Member benefits / Services January 2021:

1.Fresh Lick of Paint: Apply for up to £500 grant towards the costs or external paint or redecoration

2. Free Business Listing /Page on the Come To Colne Website (BID businesses need to send us their business listing information and 1 image that represents your business).

3. FREE WEBSITE set up ; Colne BID is offering you FREE technical support to set up your basic online shop using Shopify. Chris, our Digital specialist will work with you to set up your online shop template and how to populate your online shop. Colne BID will also pay for the first month’s Shopify subscription worth $29 (Ongoing monthly Shopify costs are $29 to be paid by the retailer).

4. Marketing /promotion of your business on the Come To Colne Social Media platforms

5. Free Professional Photography Services for your business /marketing * Terms & Conditions Apply

6. Free Bitesize Online training Courses in Social media, Digital marketing, HR, Employment

7. Part of Come To Colne branding & Marketing Campaigns

8. Set up of an online shop on ‘Shopify’ shop – worth £175 per business . We will provide technical support to set up your shop and pay first month subscription of a Shopify e-commerce website ($29).

9. Bespoke Social Media training sessions for your business at a subsided cost (small group or one-to-one)

10. BLOG writing / PR/ Media release /content creation support services to help promote your business

Colne BID can look to provide additional business support on request. We are open to new ideas on how the BID levy can be spent to meet all four strands of the Colne BID Business plan ; Promote, Pride, Partnership, Protect.

Apply now for a ‘Fresh Lick of Paint ‘ grant of up to £500.

Colne BID businesses can now apply for Colne BID’s exclusive member benefit ‘A Fresh Lick of Paint’. A new initiative called A Fresh Lick of Paint. The idea is that each year for the next four years. Colne BID will make up to £10,000 available under its core “Pride” remit to redecorate the exteriors of businesses within the BID Area. (Subject to funds being available). In the current year, the budget is initially £5000. We are offering up to £500, or half the cost of the external redecoration, whichever is lower, as a grant . We are also opening up the A Fresh Lick of Paint Scheme to include signage and canopy refreshing.”

Click here for more details and to download the application form.

Visit our Virtual High Street www.cometocolne.com

Winter 2019 /20 update

Colne BID lit up Colne High street in December with over 100 door wreaths to add sparkle and pride to businesses on the High Street and make Colne more welcoming and attractive. We did look into adding an additional Christmas lights feature or a large Christmas Tree but this was put on hold for wider consultation and discussion in 2020.

colne christmas wreath

Our New ‘Come To Colne’ brand and website is being finalised. (It has been delayed until the new year, due to our BID Manager taking bereavement leave at the end of the year.) We have also filmed a short promotional video to promote our new ‘Come to Colne’ brand messages with Tony Livesey, local journalist, TV & Radio Broadcaster kindly doing the voiceover for us.

2019 got off to a slow start financially for Colne BID, as there was a delay in sending the Year 1 bills (which meant our operating income didn’t start arriving at the bank until July and only in small installments). We are still chasing up non- BID Levy payers through the formal legal process, but 97% of businesses have paid now. Year 2 Bid Levy Bills will be sent out around April /May 2020 (Date TBC).

Colne is still performing quite strongly as a town centre, continuing to attract new shops, services and attractions such as Earnie’s, Northern Whisper Brewing Company, MediSpa to name a few, but we need more people to visit Colne and spend more money here, more often to keep our town centre vibrant and our businesses in business . This will be our core Marketing focus over the next 4 years. Promoting Colne as destination to the wider catchment area targeting a 25 min drive time and creating a digital platform to discover Colne High Street online. It’s estimated we will spend around £110k over the 5 year lifetime of the BID on Promoting Colne. Underspend in Year 1 will be moved into year 2 so we have an accelerated year of project activity (subject to people/staff resource to deliver all the projects).

‘Colne BID wants to ensure the town continues to promote itself and diversify its offer to becomes an attractive destination where people not only shop, but choose to spend quality leisure time both during the day and evening.’’

Colne BID delivers projects on behalf of the business community based around Pride in Colne, Promoting Colne, Partnership in Colne and making the town safer. We have done lots of ‘low cost’ or no cost activity such as lobbying various agencies on car parking, electric car parking, submitting a Heritage Action Zone BID to Historic England (we were unsuccessful but we are exploring another avenue of getting funding for Colne, litter picks and removing fly posting. Engaging with Police and young people to tackle Anti social behaviour in the town.

We don’t have a finite list of projects to deliver in 2020 just yet -our BID Board is scoping a list of proposed project activity for the 4 key areas of Promotion, Pride, Partnership and Protect and will be consulting with businesses on which projects they would like Colne BID to take forward.
These are early ‘suggestions’ of some project activity that could be funded or delivered using Colne BID monies in 2020:

Offering free Social Media support and training to businesses
Offering a low cost photography service to help small businesses promote their business.
‘A Fresh Lick of Paint ‘ grant of up to £500 (match funding is required by the BID Business) to buy paint, decoration to improve the outside of businesses. £10K has been provisionally allocated to this project for Year 2 and any Colne BID levy paying business can apply. Contact Colne BID manager for information.
Enlisting the services of a business cost reduction company that can bulk buy and enable businesses to save money on utility bills, Water and credit cards machines. Meercat Associates will be working with Colne BID Business from March 2020.
The possibility of having an ‘ODD job person /local company ’ able to do maintenance & repair jobs for businesses at a reduced cost/ hourly rate.
Adding a new Christmas light feature
Adding additional CCTV cameras in current black spot areas – (costs are being finalised and camera project will be considered subject to Colne BID’s budget).
Buying additional or replacement street /finger post signage
Costing up environmental projects – chewing gum removal , additional floral features, Lampost banners
Improving Arrival /Gateway and Landmarks around the BID area to give a sense of place and a warm welcome to Colne
A PR/marketing programme to promote the new ‘Come to Colne’ brand outside of the local area.
A Marketing campaign to promote ‘Colne after 5’ – aimed at bringing more people into town after 5pm for leisure, entertainment, food and drink, training and craft activities.
Part Funding a one off town centre event for VE Day on 8th May 2020. (£5000 has been allocated) with funding BID of £10k submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund to support this event.
Working as part of a multi agency partnership to engage/tackle the growing problem of Anti-social behaviour of youths
A Cycling initiative/ PR /marketing campaign to make Colne more Cycle friendly and maximise the Colne Grand Prix connections.

We hope this gives you an idea of where we are to date. Regular newsletters and updates will go out to all BID businesses on our mailing list every 4-6 weeks. Please e-mail us your details if you aren’t receiving any communication from us.

We will be holding our first AGM meeting on TUESDAY 26th FEBRUARY at Pendle Hippodrome 6pm -7.30pm to BID members to present the Year 1 accounts. We will outline past and future project activity. Please feel free to comment or give feedback on anything or give us ideas of what you think the BID money should be spent on or if you are having any problems at your side of town.

It’s YOUR Town and YOUR BID. Please get involved. We would like to hear any ideas you have for marketing, events, training requirements, business networking, improving business in Colne or any project ideas Colne BID could fund. Please e-mail: manager@colnebid.co.uk or get in touch with any Colne BID board member.

over 6 years ago

Colne Bid