Businesses in the Bathgate Business Improvement District (BID) once again turned out in numbers to vote YES to support another 5-year term of the Bathgate BID.
The YES votes (166) were within 1 vote of the last ballot count 5 years ago. The NO votes (29) were down from 42 at the last ballot count. The YES votes accumulated £2.913m of rateable value against a NO vote value of £647,350.
Enterprising Bathgate would like to thank everyone who took part in the ballot and also those who took the time to talk to us about the future aspirations for businesses in the town centre.
Ten years ago, David Stein, chair of the board of directors at that time said, he never saw the BID as a five-year project and wanted to see the delivery of projects and initiatives which would benefit the town for many years to come. Enterprising Bathgate board members agreed with his philosophy then and still do today as we set out on our third 5-year term.
Our Business Plan, which accompanied the voting papers, outlined your priorities and highlighted how we will continue to improve our town centre and support businesses and organisations based there.
Every business was given the opportunity to have their say through a business survey sent to all our levy payers in 2017 and their views were reflected in the Business Plan for the next 5 years. The survey demonstrated the popularity of our established projects, such as the Premises Improvement Scheme, the Bathgate in Bloom initiative, funding 24/7 monitoring of the town centre’s CCTV cameras and providing free First Aid courses to all businesses within the BID area.
