Before the meeting there was a presentation on the forthcoming Abingdon Hydro share offer on November 1st.
In a second presentation The Deputy Lord Lieutenant for Abingdon, Mrs Felicity Dick, explained the role of the Lord Lieutenant as the Queen’s representative in Oxfordshire.
The Town Council Meeting then examined the minutes of the previous town council meeting (25th June), and made a few corrections. After that the council went through the minutes of all the sub-committees – discussing and voting on the recommendations.
(Pictured above is a new fashion shop that has appeared this week in Bury Street.)
The town council is a business in the proposed Abingdon Business Improvement District (BID). Like other businesses in the town centre it can vote for, or against, the BID, intended to promote the town centre at a levy of 1.5 – 1.7% on business rates.
The Town Council actually has 4 businesses (Guildhall, Museum, Town Council etc) and each have a vote. So the Town Council voted by 17-0 with 1 abstention to vote 4X for the BID.
There followed a discussion, and agreement, on a plan for choosing a cinema operator for the Guildhall. Adverts will go out in trade magazines looking for expressions of interest. Then operators will be asked to tender to run the future cinema. A decision about the preferred operator will be made on 11th December 2014.
You do wonder whether a pop up cinema like the one in Wantage at The Beacon (the renamed Civic Hall) might validate whether the people will use the cinema they say they want.
When the County Hall Museum was redeveloped the flag pole was trimmed, cutting off the rotten end. Now it appears that the flag pole is too short as the flags are getting snagged and damaged. This has been a false economy and a new longer flag pole will be purchased.
The Town Council is also selling some of the worn Union Flags that have graced our streets to raise money for the Mayor’s Charity fund. They will be £5 each. Email the council to get one.
A company (sounded similar to the one that half planned a last minute Retro Music festival last weekend and pulled out with 3 days to go) want to do a Christmas Market Place event in December, with council help. The council did not think the company had given enough detail to their plan, and so have not approved it.
Beware bidding for the union flag outside merityre. It’s broken and is flying upside down and has been all summer. Am I the only one who gets wound up by people flying the flag upside down?
I was interested to hear of all the items in this post. Thank you Backstreeter for providing information. On the subject of promoting and encouraging business in the Town, could I ask if there is any mechanism to help or inform new businesses about how they can make their presence known? I noticed the new fashion shop in the Precinct….a very welcome addition…..(for me, anyway!).
But I also noticed a new Gentlemen’s Barber (I think) in the former Newsagents shop in Bridge St. It looked pretty quiet last week. No so many passers by in that part of town….I wonder if anyone even knew he was there? It must be a problem for anyone opening an independent shop in one of the side streets in Abingdon.
Kennys hat is to be congratulated on recognising even that the Union Flag was upside down – not many can tell the difference. However, the business concerned may actually have been in distress since this Summer and is about to fold !
Will we be having an increase in our council tax in order for the TC to pay its share of the BID?
If the BID is as successful as some pray, will we get a reduction in our council tax to reflect the savings?
If the BID goes ahead will the TC now be paying public money towards ChAPs as well as towards the BID, or just one?
Is it that the TC will be voting “4x for the BID”, or, because of their size, does the weighting of each of the TC votes actually count for ‘more’? In fact, could, because of the weighting applied, the TCs “4 votes” vote in the BID themselves…even if all the other businesses said ‘no’?
Daniel – I will leave Councillors to reply to your first 3 questions, but the answer to the last one is that for the BID to go ahead it has to get a majority of votes in two ways: a straight majority of votes cast AND more than 50% of the rateable value of the votes cast. So it is not possible either for a few big businesses to overrule a lot of small ones or vice versa.
More safeguards in this than todays referendum!
As Backstreeter has confirmed, the TC have 4 rateable properties within the Bid area. So they get 4 votes, however the government have ruled that any local authority can NOT vote NO. Therefore they will either vote yes, as has been reported, or can abstain from voting.
I would be curious as to which councillor abstained from voting at the meeting?
There are a further 25 rateable properties within the area that are controlled by the District or County council, they will also get a vote on each property. So it looks like it’s 29-0 before the proper businesses start voting.
Daniel is correct when he asks about council tax, where do the councils get their money? the residents of Abingdon, so they will obviously pass on this cost to them.
I would be interested to know how much the combined councils would be paying towards the Bid.
Daniel,
As far as I know:
1 Unlikely – the extra rate the TC will pay will be a relatively small part of its budget and i would expect it will be able to cover it from within its current revenue.
2 Also unlikely – I think it’s the case that part of the way a BID works is that councils are not allowed to reduce what they do in response to a BID setting up – the businesses need to know that they will be getting extra things for the extra money they pay.
3 The ChAPs Board has had initial discussions about what will happen if the BID goes through. No final decisions have been made but the general consensus is that ChAPs will reduce its scope considerably but that some sort of forum where reps from the three councils, businesses and community groups discuss issues would be a good thing.
4 As Hester says.
Neil’s summary broadly accords with my expectations although no decisions yet taken by either the board or the councils. It is likely that some of the activities of CHaps will end up moving back to one or other of the councils so overall expenditure likely to be about the same but probably delivered in different ways from today.
Call me a cynic but it sounds like a load hat passing and money spending with no end result.
…perhaps that’s the plan Colin…
I am just curious, so please forgive my ponderings (in truth I am not overly fussed whether the BID succeeds or not), but I didn’t realise that the council buildings referred to are considered ‘businesses’? Or have I again misunderstood something?
It is payers of business rates Daniel. The overwhelming majority of these are conventional profit making businesses but it also includes a number of public sector and charitable organisations who operate ‘commercial’ premises.
Thank you Iain.
Colin – the basic purpose of a BID is that businesses in the BID area pay a bit more in business rates to collectively fund projects that benefit business in the area. This is in addition to whatever the current level of spending by councils is.
Quite a few BIDs are already up and running in other towns and they support things like public events, better marketing, enhancements to the local environment etc.
I have someone who was concidering opeing a shop in the town but has been put off by its dire appearance. Being not so virbance and lively as Witney and Didcot. PLease council do something more that opening a cinema in the Guild Hall. Business relief and rent relief, stop the sticky plaster remedies. Abingdon needs intensive care!
What kind of shop was it going to be, selling what?
Abingdon born – unfortunately both your suggestions at
Re beyond the powers of any council.
Business rates is set by central government and the revenues go there too. The only role the local authorities have is to collect them.
Rents are set by the landlords. The main landlord in abingdon is scottish widows/aberdeen asset management. So any rent reductions are entirely down to them.
I know its frustrating but it is the system that we live in – it is no different for other towns.
How can the town council vote to support the bid when the bid proposal including the map of the area it will cover has not been decided yet?
Surely all the information is needed before a decision can be made on such important issues.
I am very concerned by the rumors that the bid area map is being created to win the bid and it has not been decided yet as Waitrose has not made a decision on how they will vote and if they vote no the map will exclude them.
As I say this is a rumor and I would be very pleased if this was untrue but the BID committee are not providing the information on this so we can only wait and see.