Penzance to follow St Austell on BID path.

St Austell voted yes to a Business Improvement District by a whopping 75% on 31 January. The Town now joins Truro, Newquay, Falmouth and Camborne as BID towns. Truro is on its second 5 year BID stint having relatively recently voted in favour of renewing it for another 5 years. 

The Chamber Chairman, Dick Cliffe, confirmed with Josyanne Thatcher, BID Development Officer, Cornwall Council, that Penzance is scheduled to start the process in May this year with the startup cost of £20,000 funded out of the Sainsburys Section 106 funds earmarked by Penzance Town Council for this purpose. 

A meeting of the Penzance Town Team will be called in the next couple of week to start the process of setting up a Penzance BID Steering Group. This group will be responsible for developing the proposal that businesses will eventually vote upon. For the BID to be approved over 50% of business must vote for it and the 50% must represent over 50% of the rateable value of the BID businesses. 

See Cornishman online news item dated 6 Feb here.
See the St Austell BID Proposal here (highly informative).