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Updates, events, and news for our Bid Members with regard to Bury St Edmunds this week. This week includes free training & courses, free map holders, and loyal free app trails.

• Opportunities to reduce your operating costs for Free

Last autumn we worked with Place Support Partnership who provided an opportunity for them to work on your behalf to reduce your operating costs. They visited the town in November and held a clinic and I also accompanied their owner Rishi, to a meet a number of you, at your place of work.

This BID membership benefit was then extended to you all until the end of last year.

Rishi has contacted me recently and has once again extended this offer for our members until the end of this year.

If you are interested is asking PSP to investigate your potential cost savings (the cost of any transfer of contracts will not rest with you) then have a look at the attached pdf document where details of there offer and their contact details are present.

• Level 3 Mental Health First Aid Course

Three Eggs (BID Member) is offering a 20% discounted virtual Mental Health First Aid course for BID members.

This is a Level 3 RQF Mental Health First Aid course, taught live by a trainer across an online platform.

The content and trainer are the same as their in-person courses but the online format is across 3 sessions (with some independent learning in between) rather than 2 full days and might be a more flexible option for some members and your staff.

Dates and times for the sessions are:

• Tuesday 18th April (10am-12pm) session 1
• Tuesday 25th April (10am-12pm) session 2
• Tuesday 2nd May (10am-12pm) session 3

Full details of the course can be found here.

The course usually costs £200+VAT so BID members cost will be reduced to £160+VAT per delegate.

If you are interested in this training, please email Three Eggs direct to achieve this discount at hello@threeeggs.co.uk

• NHS, Blue Light and Military Discounts –  Loyal Free App Trail

Thanks to our free app with LoyalFree www.loyalfree.co.uk  we create a variety of business listing style trails to make it easier for visitors to discover businesses on these trails and hopefully increase footfall. Depending on the nature of your business you may appear on multiple trails. For example, you could be a dog friendly, Bury St Edmunds gift card, vegan, gluten free café business and be listed on all these individual trails. We have extended our original discount trail to include the NHS, Blue Light and Military community as many of our businesses offer discounts for all or some of these customers.

If you would like your business to be included on this trail, please email mike.kirkham@ourburystedmunds.com highlighting what you offer, who can access your discount and any terms & conditions. It maybe you already accept a variety of discount cards for this community such as the Defence Discount Service Card, Blue Light Card, Armed Forces Veteran’s Discount Card, and others.

• Disability Confident Committed Employer

At the recent Iliffe Jobs Fair, which we attended to promote BID businesses job vacancies, we met the local Department for Work & Pensions lead for the Disability Confident Committed Employer Scheme www.gov.uk/disability-confident .

This scheme is about encouraging employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain, and develop disabled employees.

Quoting from their leaflet, “employing disabled staff could help you access the spending power of disabled people and their families estimated to be £249 billion.”

The scheme, which has three levels, gives employers free access to guidance and support, information about potential funding, webinars, workshops and an accreditation certificate and the Disability Confident logo for their website and recruitment ads.

If you would like to find out more, please email Richard Cox richard.cox@dwp.gov.uk or phone 0739 228 0584.

• FREE Town Centre Map  / Map Holders

We recently started to distribute Issue 30 of our popular FREE Town Centre Map which lists all BID businesses and a range of helpful visitor place markers and information.

Supported by the Bury St Edmunds Rickshaw we have already distributed to the large map holders at the tourist information points and other high footfall areas.

If you would like one of our small A6 map holders (see attached image) or just need a top up of maps, then please email mike.kirkham@ourburystedmunds.com and we will deliver to you.

Our Bury St Edmunds and The Arc Shopping Centre have partnered up to bring you a synthetic Ice Skating Rink!

Between the 14th of December and the 3rd of January,  this synthetic Ice Skating Rink will be taking centre stage on Charter Square. With a capacity of up to 25 people, this advanced rink will provide icy entertainment no matter the weather!

As it stands, sessions for the rink will be free of charge.

The rink is just one of the fabulous activities Bury St Edmunds has in store for you this Christmas…

 

 

• An ice rink is returning to Bury this Christmas!

You may have seen this week the announcement that the BID and the arc shopping centre are working together and are bringing a synthetic ice rink to the town for 3 weeks, either side of Christmas. This is with a view of attracting additional visitors to the town centre during this very important trading period for our members.

We needed to secure the ice rink this month or risk is going to another location.

We want use of the ice rink to be free of charge so people who use the rink can spend their money with yourselves.

In order to achieve this we need to access some additional funding, which myself and Allan Hassell (arc manager and BID Vice Chair) will be working on over the coming months.

I will keep you updated on developments.

• Free Mental Health Awareness Training

As you will be aware we periodically provide FREE mental health training for our members and currently we have a few spaces still available for our next course at the premises of BID member, Three Eggs, Angel Hill on Tuesday 25^th April.

If you wish to take up one of these places please contact my colleague Mike Kirkham at mike.kirkham@ourburystedmunds.com asap. As this course has been previously advertised, these remaining places will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

• Further FREE training for your staff

Multiply Suffolk is delivering some FREE training for employees of businesses across Suffolk, to help staff acquire skills that will be beneficial in the work place.

Currently these include, numeracy, english as well as providing mentoring and coaching services. The training can be provided in small groups or on a 1-1 basis, to best suit the person receiving the training.

If you want to find out more about accessing these services, at no cost to your business please email multiplysuffolk@suffolk.gov.uk

• BID AGM

Here’s a date for your diary, our AGM will be held at The Guildhall from 6pm on Thursday 15^th June. This is an opportunity for BID businesses to meet our Board members and our staff and hear about what we have achieved during the financial year 22/23.

Additionally our priorities for the forthcoming financial year, will be outlined.

In order to make the necessary logistical arrangements, if you would like to come along can you let my colleague Jackie Regan at jackie.regan@ourburystedmunds.com know and also if you have any dietary requirements can you make her aware as we will be providing refreshments for those attending.

• Virtual High Street

Since we launched the above platform, in partnership with local IT firm Queue Technology, late last year, around 60 of you have set up a page for yourself and are benefiting from the enhanced ranking you now have for your business, with Google and many of you are using this FREE service to promote and sell your goods, services and events to the public.

For those of you who haven’t yet set up a page for your business please feel free to visit the site, Supporting local business in your area! (virtualhighstreet.uk) and click the JOIN button and you can create your page or contact Daisy Woodward daisy@queue.technology who can assist you through the process.

 

• Further evening work on the Multi Storey car park

I have been advised by West Suffolk Council that due to low temperatures during the last evening works, their contractors working on the Parkway multi-storey were not able to complete the painting work. They will now be carrying out this work on Monday through to Wednesday next week from 6.30pm.

As with before, the car park will be closed from 6.30pm on these three evenings and they ask that all drivers have moved their vehicles out of the car park before this time.

If you have any concerns or questions either now or during the overnight work, please don’t hesitate to get in contact.

You can email property.services@westsuffolk.gov.uk or call the contractors at Concrete Repairs Ltd on the out of hours numbers below:

Laurenc Hazizi        07572 651946

Adam Drazga         07764 521118

Kevin Hodgson       07801 200699

Local Suffolk-based artist, Tom Crittenden, is the Bury St Edmunds Adnams store manager that took up painting during the Coronavirus lockdown. He said lockdown ‘fast-tracked’ his art and that it provides a form of escapism from modern-day ‘turbulence.’  Tom continues to paint now, selling many of his pieces online (https://www.tomcrittendenart.com/)

Our latest version of the town map (link to town map) features an image inspired by Tom’s painting, Cherry Blossom on Crown Street. The painting features the well-known cheery trees in blossom on in the town centre – showing off their beautiful colours and focusing on the tranquillity.

We’re kicking off our Love Your Town Campaign –  #LoveBuryStEdmunds which commenced on Monday and will run through until Monday, 4th April. The aim is to remind visitors who live, work, and play in our fabulous town of the great choice and range of businesses we have in the sectors of shopping, food & drink, wellbeing, entertainment and professional services.

It will run as a digital campaign on our social media channels. We will invite people to share on Facebook why they love Bury St Edmunds, their special place or building, their favourite street, their favourite business, etc.

We will be using a range of social media infographics to promote engagement, some of which are attached and free for you to use, so it would be great if you used any of these on your social media platforms during the campaign.

After the campaign, we will share some of the visitor comments, and three winners will be selected to receive an Our Bury St Edmunds Gift Card.

If you have any promotions, deals, or offers you plan during this time, please send your details to pr@ourburystedmunds.com. For general queries, please contact mike.kirkham@ourburystedmunds.com

You may have seen that we are revamping and rebranding what was the Whitsun Fayre this year, and the Spring Fayre will take place over the late May Bank Holiday (Sunday the 28th and Monday 29th). We will have many attractions at the event, including the return of an urban beach and some Virtual Reality games for people to participate in, as well as many other attractions.

At our events, there is the opportunity for BID members to have a 3m pitch at a discounted rate, and if you are interested, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our Events Manager, Jackie Regan, at jackie.regan@ourburystedmunds.com

As you may be aware, our previous chair, Maria Broadbent from Casa, has relocated to the Midlands and consequently has stood down as our Chair. While identifying a suitable replacement, I am delighted that Andrew Speed, owner of St Edmundsbury Wealth Management and Larkbridge Mortgages (both BID voluntary members), has agreed to cover this role until our June AGM at the latest.

Andrew has previously held this position on two occasions, so is well acquainted with the role.

With the above taking place in early May, you may well be planning to commemorate this with events, products or services to celebrate the Coronation of the King.

If this is the case, please let us know, and we will be very happy to spread the word to all of our social media followers to raise the profile of what you are doing. Just contact Mike Kirkham at mike.kirkham@ourburystedmunds.com, and he’ll arrange this promotional activity for you.

As you will know, on your behalf, I speak to many businesses and individuals who want our BID members to be aware of the various products and services they have to offer.

 If I ever consider these opportunities to be inappropriate for our businesses then I choose not to make you aware of them, so your valuable time isn’t wasted.

I want to make it clear that my personal knowledge and awareness of cryptocurrencies in general and Bitcoin specifically, is extremely limited and therefore this opportunity is one for you to consider based on your own personal circumstances.

As you will see in the attached, the cost to you, as a business, to accept bitcoin as a customer payment is free of charge, and the cost implication only occurs if you wish to convert bitcoin to pounds and pence and if you do the cost, I am informed, is less than you pay for a credit card transaction. The money will also be in your account almost immediately after you accept the payment through the coincorner app. 

I am mindful that this might seem very complicated. You may be concerned about the security of funds and the risk involved, but as you may have seen in last week’s Bury Free Press, Peter, at Procopio’s Pantry (BID member) accepts payments by Bitcoin, and this has attracted new customers, as a consequence of his decision to accept payment by Bitcoin.

You will also see that some other businesses in Bury, outside of the town centre, currently accept Bitcoin.

There is the phenomenon of “Crypto Tourism” where those people who do use bitcoin in their transactions are prepared to travel quite long distances to visit businesses accepting Bitcoin, and I think that is a potential for Bury to be a “Bitcoin Hotspot” if sufficient businesses are prepared to accept Bitcoin as a transaction currency.

This will provide yet another reason for people not living locally to come to Bury and then see all that we have to offer.

I have been speaking to Suffolk Bitcoin, and Jason, from that group, would be very happy to speak to BID businesses about this concept and how easy it is to incorporate it into your business model.

I would be very happy to invite him to speak to a number of you, and if this interests you, then please let me know, and I can make the necessary arrangements.

Attached is a word document for you to read, which includes the proposal for Suffolk Bitcoin to create and market a Bury Bitcoin Trail, and we would feature, on our Loyal Free app, something similar, promoting those BID businesses who accept Bitcoin.

The attached pdf outlines the straightforward process to use the coincorner app and accept Bitcoin as a payment option

Also attached is a FAQ document which hopefully addresses the majority of questions you may have on this subject.

 I hope you find this opportunity of interest, and if you want to know more, then feel free to contact me or Suffolk Bitcoin at suffolkbitcoin@gmail.com.