The Our Bury St Edmunds BID was created on 1st April 2010 and was successfully returned for its third 5-year term, which commenced on 1st April 2020.

The following are our current 4 main objectives.

1. Enhancing the Visitor Experience

To encourage repeat visits to the town, we must ensure that people enjoy their experience.

The best marketing for our town is word of mouth, a recommendation from friends and family, and this only happens if visitors like what they find and have a positive experience regarding when they visit.

The BID does this by:

BID events that bring thousands of people to the town centre

Our two-day Spring Fayre in late May.

Motorsport East show in July.

Our two-day Food and Drink Festival in late August.

Christmas Lights Event in mid-November.

BID members get a 50% discount to have a stall at our events.

Lighting up the town for Christmas

The BID is responsible for the Christmas Lights displayed in the town and there is a refurbishment and replacement programme in place. Hence, the town looks as attractive as possible during the 7-8 weeks before and after Christmas Day, that the lights are illuminated, which is a critical trading period for our members.

Cleaning the town centre of graffiti

We offer a free service to remove graffiti from the business units of BID members and where appropriate public spaces too.

Keeping Bury St Edmunds looking blooming beautiful

Creating and maintaining a visually attractive environment centre is key to encouraging people to visit, revisit and remain in our town centre, which benefits our members.

We work with the local charity Bury in Bloom in providing floral displays across the town centre as part of our contribution to the town being recognised regionally and nationally for its floral displays.

Encouraging and promoting other town centre events

We work with other organisations to have as many different events going on in the town, including regular Makers and Farmers Markets.

Keeping Bury St Edmunds town centre a safe and enjoyable place to visit

We have a good working relationship

and regularly liaise with the Police and West Suffolk Council regarding Crime and Disorder issues to ensure that the town centre feels like a safe place to visit.

2. Marketing your town

Having done all we can to ensure that Bury St Edmunds is a popular visitor and retail destination, we then need to provide as many people as possible, with this information so they are aware of what the town, has to offer.

The Our Bury St Edmunds brand markets and promotes the town to predominantly those who live or work in the town and those that do not live in the town but regularly visit here within a 30-mile radius of the town. We see these as our regular customers who we must keep encouraging to revisit the town.

We market and promote the town’s offer via our website, our social media channels, PR, broadcast and print advertising and printed promotional material wherever we feel are appropriate to promote our events.

We also want to get new customers to visit the town, and so through the Bury St Edmunds and Beyond visitor brand, we promote and market the town as a tourist destination. We predominantly target those living in London, the Home Counties, the Southeast and the Midlands.

Since launching the Bury St Edmunds and Beyond brand in September 2017, it has had over 2 million visits to its website, and the town has been featured in hundreds of national publications and we have hosted over 50 press trips from national and sometimes international journalists.

3. Improving the town centre trading environment

We support the businesses in the town centre by improving the trading environment in which they operate.

This includes:

• Free training for businesses that they would otherwise have to pay for.
• Advertising Town centre business vacancies on our website.
• Providing a voice for town centre businesses on national and local issues that affect them.
• Building productive relationships with all three councils responsible for Bury St Edmunds town centre and our local MP.
• Influencing issues and representing town centre businesses in Bury St Edmunds at a national and regional level as members of British BIDS and Eastern BIDs Network, of which our CEO is currently Chair.
• Working with commercial organisations in helping town centre businesses reduce their operating costs.
• Keeping up with new trends and providing information to businesses on new trends – recently we provided information for our members to consider accepting Bitcoin as payment for goods and services, as this trend is increasing nationwide.
• Setting up new initiatives to encourage people to visit the town centre and keep spend local – for example town centre trails, the Bury St Edmunds Loyal Free app, Bury St Edmunds Gift Card (currently accepted at over 70 businesses, and any business can sign up to accept the card) and our new Virtual High Street platform.

4. Making your town greener

The issue of climate change and taking better care of our environment is important to many people and yourselves.

The key issue, we believe, is offering an acceptable cost-benefit balance, and to achieve this, we are regularly liaising  with experts within this environment both locally and regionally and these include www.westsuffolkhive.org.uk  & www.savemoneycutcarbon.com

Additionally, we are pleased to see recent announcements from West Suffolk & Suffolk County Councils about increasing the number of EV charging units in the town and the investment in improving cycling facilities.

We are also pleased to see the increased EV charging facilities that BID member, Waitrose, is now providing.

The BID has reduced its environmental footprint by using recycled paper wherever possible and is investigating the possibility of achieving a net zero status.

Our Bury St Edmunds BID is working with Bury St Edmunds Rickshaw’s Eco Carriers initiative to encourage more people to shop at businesses and have their goods delivered in and around the town.