ALTHOUGH this is a relatively new column for this year sharing information about the Business Improvement District here in the town centre of Weston, we are now in our third successful year of our 5-year BID term. 

We have recently reviewed all of the projects and I’m delighted that the Board has now published our Year 2 Annual Report that covers the work from April 2023 to March 2024. 

I’d urge you to visit our website to review more details about the projects the team have worked hard to deliver over the last 12 months; the BID Street Wardens in particular as part of our commitment to business crime reduction and keeping our town centre safe.

Although the BID Street Wardens are a vital element of our BID in Weston, there are a number of other projects within the themes of: safety, security and streetscape; marketing and events; and business support.

Projects include monitoring footfall figures, promoting our businesses on social media, managing a radio link service, watering our floral displays and more.

In terms of footfall, we provide monthly figures on our website from the four digital footfall monitors within the BID area.

These are located in the High Street (near Costa), outside the Tropicana, the Italian Gardens and at the top of Walliscote Road.

The area where we recorded the highest number of people was in the Italian Gardens with a footfall of 1,005,248 in the last 12 months.

I hope this is partly down to the excellent events we supported, including the eat:Christmas food festival and Christmas lights switch-on event in partnership with the Town Council, which was incredibly well attended.

I look forward to sharing some of our highlights from the start of year 3 in the next column here.

Until then, please do support our town centre businesses, especially your favourites however you can.

Shop local when you can and even a ‘like’ or share of their profiles on social media makes a difference to small businesses in particular. It also helps by keeping positive stories about Weston on social media.

Until next time.