BIDs Boost!

Last week, Mr Attwood announced that he will take forward new legislation to give greater powers to businesses to improve town centres.

The announcement came following a meeting with Department of Environment Minister Edwin Poots at which the issue was discussed.

The new legislation will introduce Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) to towns and cities and will mean greater powers and control for councils and local businesses. BIDs allow businesses to vote on the services they want to invest in to improve their trading environment. The sorts of services that can be improved include security, street cleaning and even new Christmas lighting.

Mayor Mills said: “Ballymena Borough Council has always worked closely with the private sector – Ballymena indeed is fully backing the setting up of Ballymena Development Ltd to oversee the development, marketing, business support, and security of Ballymena Town Centre.

“This initiative only came about because of the vision and leadership shown by our town centre business men and women and their confidence in Ballymena Borough Council and Central Government Departments like DSD, DRD, Planning and PSNI to work in partnership to deliver an even better experience for visitors to Ballymena”.

Ballymena Borough Council Town Clerk and Chief Executive, Anne Donaghy, who is Shadow Chair of the Ballymena Development Ltd Board, added, “We recently had a very successful first Board meeting which included senior people from all sectors and we have set up four Working Groups to begin to deal with Town Centre issues. I am excited by the energy and enthusiasm shown at our first meeting and the desire to deliver real improvements”.

Ballymena Development Ltd is an evolution of Ballymena voluntary BIDs partnership which has been lobbying for BIDs legislation to be introduced, over the last three years.

The voluntary partnership has also been successful in obtaining 716k from Interreg IVa European funding to develop and implement the BIDs concept in partnership with:

• Ballymena Borough Council

• Coleraine Borough Council

• Larne Borough Council

• Sligo Country Council

• South Ayrshire Council

The funding will be administered by the lead partner, Ballymena Borough Council and Chairman of the Councils BIDs Sub Committee, Ald PJ Mc Avoy stated, “Minister Atwoods statement is very good news for Ballymena. After a lot of hard work by our retail sector, Council and Government officials, I want to thank one and all for their efforts and look forward now to delivering through Ballymena Development Ltd a safer, cleaner, more enjoyable, competitive Ballymena Town Centre, to keep it the number one shopping town in Northern Ireland”.