4 cityfocus • January 2015 @ChichesterBID www.chichesterbid.co.uk @ChichesterBID www.chichesterbid.co.uk

We are delighted to welcome Charlotte Wickins to the management team. As Chichester BID Manager, Charlotte is the key liaison between BID area businesses, public authorities, contractors, suppliers and the board of directors.

Having worked in both public and private sectors Charlotte brings a new perspective. Holding a Master’s degree in Business from Portsmouth Business School plus experience in new business development, establishing start-ups and developing small businesses, Charlotte will put her knowledge of events and venue management, commercial property and consulting to use within Chichester BID.

Charlotte will oversee the management of the BID, with responsibility for delivering the core streams of improvement identified for Chichester: Environment, Safety, Promotion and Organisation.

She is looking forward to strengthening existing relationships, developing current project initiatives and identifying new opportunities for the City centre.

City Centre Partnership Chairman Andrew Finnamore explains: "It was this combination of strategic knowhow and robust experience that set Charlotte apart from other applicants. We believe she has the initiative and tenacity we need in this role and that she will be a strong member of the team. On behalf of the Board, I welcome Charlotte warmly and very much look forward to working with her.”

Having been self-employed Charlotte understands the commitment, frustration and sheer determination it takes to run a business. Charlotte comments: “Getting people into the city centre is the challenge and the high street needs to be convenient as well as current. I believe collaboration between businesses is key to this,

which is why the BID is such a positive move for Chichester. Just being competitive isn’t enough! Not only do you have to know what your customers want, you have to offer quality and excellence as the new norms.”

Charlotte will be based in the BID office in North Street, working part-time alongside Kim Long. Her appointment allows Kim to now focus fully on orchestrating and managing the many City Centre events and projects.

Chichester Businesses Against Crime (ChiBAC) delivers the safety elements of the BID Business plan, in line with the £35,000 contract the BID has with ChiBAC and in 2014 this included:

Radios: ChiBAC’s radio license with Ofcom is renewed annually and 100 ChiBAC members take advantage of the radio lease scheme in the City for just £5 per week (plus VAT) instead of £8 per week. All non-member businesses in the BID area can opt for a radio, subsidised by the BID, offering the significantly reduced rate of 37.5%. To take advantage of the radio lease scheme, please contact Tessa.Callingham@sussex.pnn.police.uk or the BID office.

Loss Prevention Agents: Operations Newman and Tinsel, are police ad hoc operations to detect and deter shoplifting in Chichester. Run in collaboration with ChiBAC throughout 2014 with some funding from the BID, the operations always have a positive impact, deterring local shoplifters for fear of being caught. The ad hoc approach also deters regular travelling offenders from Portsmouth and Southampton.

SIA Agents: Again using BID funding, ChiBAC provided 4 roaming SIA personnel in a ‘street marshal’ capacity on 4 key occasions during 2014, working from 6.00pm to 1.00am each night. The events included Thursday, Friday and Saturday of Glorious Goodwood and the Friday night before Christmas – all days which historically have seen an increase in drunken and antisocial behaviour in our City.

SIA personnel offer support and a bigger presence in the area, help support door staff ejecting people from venues and provide valuable assistance at the taxi rank on the north side of the station.

Drug Dog Operation: Funded with BID money ChiBAC undertook a drug dog operation on Friday 2nd August to coincide with Glorious Goodwood, which historically has

seen an increase in drug use (seen or suspected) in Chichester’s night time venues. All this is aimed at keeping our city safe and pleasant.

Body worn cameras: Following two trials of body worn cameras at the University of Chichester Student Union Bar and the Dolphin and Anchor in West Street, ChiBAC rolled out use of the cameras fully for the night time venues.

The cameras often diffuse situations that previously would probably have escalated. The manager of The Dolphin and Anchor comments: “Let me take the opportunity to say again that these body worn cameras are one of the best tools I have ever had at my disposal and ChiBAC should be proud of this initiative. Over the Christmas period I would say it completely diffused at least 10 incidents that could have very quickly escalated to something bigger.” In some cases the images captured will also assist police in their enquiries where people have been arrested.

These cameras have been provided with BID funding through the contract with ChiBAC so, naturally, we’re delighted with this feedback.

Chichester BID welcomes Charlotte Wickins as the City’s new BID Manager

We are delighted that the new pay on exit facility has been implemented in the Avenue de Chartres (multi-storey) car park! After much lobbying, debate and discussion on our part, we’re thrilled that city centre visitors and businesses will no longer feel pressured to return to their cars as this gives them the option to spend more time and money in our fair city!

Andrew Finnamore, CCP Chairman is delighted, commenting: “I am in no doubt that this project will be a success and it will be truly fabulous if we can extend the system of ‘Pay on Exit’ to the Cattle Market and Northgate car parks in the near future. All credit to the District for getting on and sorting the project when small bureaucracies could have derailed the plans.”

Charlotte Wickins joins Chichester BID

Finally! Our Pay on exit car park!

Chichester Christmas MarketThe Christmas Market was once again a success, with the streets buzzing with festive, Christmas cheer. Many thanks to those that provide electricity feeds to the market, avoiding the need for generators: Boots, Jacques Vert, Macari’s, Jones the Boot makers, Topshop, Superdrug, Body Suite and the BID office.

Thanks also to Marks and Spencer on East Street for agreeing to the ever-popular live nativity and stable being located in front of their main display window again this year. Marks and Spencer reported a distinct increase in carrot sales for that week!

Christmas TreesThank you to all the businesses that helped to supplement our Christmas lights this year with wall-mounted festive trees. 100 trees were erected, lit and removed for just £80 per tree – 20 more trees than last year and we’re hoping to improve on this for 2015!

New Christmas Lights in 2015We’re pleased to announce that we will be choosing a new lighting display for the City centre this Christmas. Our five year contract with Gala Lights enables us to change the lights for the final two years of the agreement. Whether we continue to have Christmas lights in the City after Christmas 2016 depends on whether the BID is voted in again in 2017 or whether one of the Councils will pick up the £50,000 per year lighting cost that the BID currently covers but, for now, we look forward to choosing our new Christmas display for the City!

City Centre Partnership BID Office, 82 North Street, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 1LQT: 01243 773263 E: info@chichesterbid.co.uk

EDITION 35 JANUARY 2015 MANAGING AND IMPROVING CHICHESTER TOGETHER

Your BID Safety Round-up

2 cityfocus • January 2015 January 2015 • cityfocus 3 @ChichesterBID www.chichesterbid.co.uk @ChichesterBID www.chichesterbid.co.uk

Total annual footfall December November First week of January (sales)2014 10111759 987578 746381 (2015) 1654312013 9724742 975841 791565 (2014) 1525072012 10397419 1063875 694363 (2013) 1685882011 10342781 1083689 732217 (2012) 1303922010 9415107 657027 572263 (2011) 83895

Free Auto-Enrolment event – are you ready?We’re delighted to be working with Blue Spire Financial Planning to deliver a seminar on 27 February 2015 for city centre companies to understand how the new pension arrangements will affect those with staff.

All businesses with PAYE schemes and more than two members of staff have a legal obligation to provide a pension scheme to their staff. To understand how it affects you and what you need to get into place before your staging date, join Blue Spire Financial Planning on 27 January 09.30 – 11.00am in their offices at Cawley Priory, South Pallant, Chichester PO19 1SY.

Book your free place by contacting Emily Dale at Blue Spire Financial Planning on 01243 781234 or via emily.dale@bluespiregroup.com

AGMThe third AGM will be held on Wednesday 29th April from 5pm. We will send out RSVP invitations nearer the time but please put this date in your diaries. We look forward to seeing you there. Christmas Treasure Hunt

Prize Draw Winner Whirligig on South Street very kindly sponsored the Christmas Treasure Hunt with £200 worth of toys for the lucky winner. The winner of the prize draw was Emily Mitchell, aged 15. Whirligig sponsored the prize draw to introduce and raise awareness of the new shop after opening last Autumn. Who will sponsor this Christmas?

Christmas Prize Draw from A-Plan £250 Complimenting their sponsorship of the Christmas Lights Switch On Firework display, A-Plan in Little London ran a prize draw through the Christmas Festivities leaflet, offering a £250 M&S voucher as the prize. The lucky winner was Mr Stephen Bullas, who was absolutely delighted and met with Dominic Glen, Branch Manager to receive his prize just in time for Christmas. Dominic felt that the lead generation and publicity from the prize draw put them well and truly on the map!

Many thanks to A-Plan and Whirligig for their sponsorship and also Russell and Bromley who kindly agreed to be a drop-off centre for the prize draw entry forms.

New stall trialledWe trialled a prototype wooden stall with one of our stall holders this year, thanks to Woodland Crafts who operate the market on our behalf. They are working with us to design a stall that is robust and still offers flexibility. No mean feat! We will keep you posted on progress for Christmas 2015.

Developing Corporate Partnerships – with The RotaryThe three Rotary Clubs of Chichester invite businesses to Chichester University on Monday 23rd February 2015 from 6.30pm – 8.30pm to explore how corporate partnerships can work better in Chichester.

Many Rotarians are retired business men and women with a wealth of skills and experience and this networking opportunity explores how Rotary and businesses can work better together – for the continued prosperity of Chichester.

Gilbert & Cleveland celebrates 21years!Wishing all at Gilbert & Cleveland a happy 21st Anniversary!

Business Signage to replace A BoardsWe are still waiting to hear if planning consent has been given for “n” frames around the City. Once we have permission, we will need advertising consent so that businesses can advertise on the boards we are supplying. Fingerposts to independents in side streetsNew fingerposts are part of the same signage application, as is a hanging sign for the Crooked S, advising people of the shops in St Martins.

St Martins Street Retail Merchandising Units (RMUs)We have also submitted a planning application for 6 RMUs to go along the blank wall of Marks and Spencer (thanks to M&S for their support of the project). These will be hired out by the BID to A1 local businesses as start-up units, adding variety and movement within St Martins, encouraging people to venture down.

Oxmarket Bin StoreThe Oxmarket Bin Store has now been built, tidying up the bins of six business premises that have blighted the Oxmarket Art Gallery for many years. Bins must go somewhere, so we’re pleased to have found a solution that supports this beautiful converted church and local attraction!

We are working with Chichester City Council and West Sussex County Council to re-lay the paving in the

East Street and Little London carpark twitten, behind the businesses and in front of the Oxmarket, extending it where required. The aim is to turn the area into a little piazza. We are trying to secure local government funding to achieve this.

Update on Environment Planning

News in Brief As part of our overall marketing plan for last year, we ran radio and bus advertising during October and November to encourage new shoppers to come to Chichester for their Christmas shopping. The objective was to reach people who could choose between Chichester or other destinations including Portsmouth, Worthing, Guildford, Petersfield… So buses featuring our advertising ran between Portsmouth and Brighton (route 700) and from the City to Petworth and Midhurst.

Our radio campaign was featured on Heart FM for the same reason of changing peoples’ usual habits, plus Spirit FM to remind locals why Chichester is so good!

Footfall figures for key periods are shown below – all footfall figures are published monthly as raw data on www.chichesterbid.co.uk

2014 was a significant improvement on 2013 which most agree had been a pretty tough year in retail. Chichester performed well on a national scale too, showing an overall increase in footfall of around 3%, when the national picture showed either no increase on 2013 figures or in some cases a drop of around 1%.

We are still not back at pre-recession levels enjoyed in 2007 and, given the national trend, it may be that we never do recover to those levels, so it is possible that a good year in Chichester is now about consistently attracting 10 million people to the City.

Christmas and New Year Round Up