Author: Sue Warren

The countdown to Christmas has well and truly begun following the Our Bury St Edmunds Christmas Lights Event this month. The magical Polar Bear and Snow Lion were huge hits and feedback from the event has been very positive. It’s lovely to see the town looking so bright after dark now and hopefully this will get everyone in the mood for Christmas shopping and festive get-togethers.

The event this year took place on St Edmund’s Day and it was good to see his flag or bunting displayed by a number of our businesses. Thanks also to the Crafty Foxes who celebrated at the event itself with a children’s workshop about St Edmund and lots wanted to have their picture taken with him and his wolf.

Meanwhile, on the same day our partners in the Dog Friendly Bury St Edmunds scheme were at an awards ceremony in London in which the UK’s most Dog Friendly Town was announced. Bury St Edmunds, which has been in the top three every year for the last three years, was the runner up. Thank you to everyone who voted for us and the recognition for our initiative is much appreciated.

The dog friendly focus continues on our new town map which has just been refreshed for the autumn and winter. They are always available at a number of places around the town including The Apex, but I know that businesses also like to stock them so do please get in touch if you’d like some for your premises.

With so much going on it’s also great to see that the three long term vacant units by Cineworld will soon all be filled and similarly the two units beside Market Thoroughfare. This clearly demonstrates how positively Bury St Edmunds is seen as a location for new businesses, which is a huge compliment considering that so many other places have rising vacancy rates.

Of course, this week we also had the Budget Statement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As ever – despite all the media speculation ahead of it – the devil is always in the detail. I’m sure many businesses will have points they want to make regarding this and – as always – I am happy to listen to them and work with them to raise these matters with our MP and ask him to forward them on to the Treasury.

Finally, it wouldn’t be Christmas without the annual Our Bury St Edmunds most festive window competition. The town centre businesses really do pull out all the stops with their windows and the standard seems to get higher every year. If you are a participating business make sure to tell all your customers and social media followers to visit the Our Bury St Edmunds website and vote before December 14. It’s by public vote only and every vote really does count.

Tackling crime and anti-social behaviour in the town centre is something that the BID and our partners take very seriously. It’s not the remit of one organisation alone and in fact all of us have a responsibility to report issues and work together to keep our town as safe as possible for businesses, residents and visitors alike. This month we formally launched the ShopSafe Alert system to BID members which allows them to share information safely and efficiently in real time. It’s available free to all our member businesses and 70 have already been using it for some months as part of a trial. Please do contact the BID office if you’d like your business to join it.

As I have commented here previously, something that I feel Bury St Edmunds does very well is customer service – and any initiatives that we can take to support or improve that are always taken seriously. Once again this year the Our Bury St Edmunds BID-sponsored Customer Service category at the Bury Free Press Business Awards was hotly contested but I was delighted to present the award to The Angel Hotel. Congratulations also to the two runners-up Bellota restaurant and Hestia Clinic which also won the Small Business of the year category.

We’re now less than three weeks away from the Our Bury St Edmunds Christmas Lights Event on the afternoon and evening of Thursday November 20 – which of course is also St Edmund’s Day. Join us in the town centre from 3pm for an afternoon and evening of entertainment on the stage and around the town centre including the wonderful Snow Lion and Polar Bear characters and a chance to have a picture taken with St Edmund and his friendly wolf. Cornhill and Buttermarket will be packed with stalls for those looking to get the Christmas shopping started too.

And as our town centre shops and businesses start to decorate their windows for Christmas, we’ll also be opening voting the week after our Christmas Lights Event for the town centre’s Best Festive Window competition, so if you’re participating do remind your customers to vote.

It’s going to be a very busy few days around that time because as well as the build up to Christmas and the celebration of our town’s namesake saint, November 20 is also the day of the national Dog Friendly Awards. Last year Bury St Edmunds was named the most dog friendly town or city and we are delighted to have reached the final three again this year. Thank you if you voted in the awards to help us get there – we are all keeping our fingers and paws crossed as we await news of the winner.

Finally, earlier this month we also held the BID’s AGM. Many thanks to those businesses who came along – it was a chance to update members on our recent achievements and our plans for the coming year.

A gift card which was launched to help Bury St Edmunds town centre as the nation came out of the pandemic is celebrating its fifth anniversary and going from strength to strength. And as the festive season approaches, it’s a great choice as staff Christmas gifts are on the minds of many workers and employers alike.

Launched in November 2020 by Our Bury St Edmunds Business Improvement District (BID), the gift card has been a popular choice for a number of companies ever since. It can be spent in 80 shops, restaurants, wellbeing and other businesses in the town centre, meaning spending is locked into the local economy. To date more than £180,000 has been spent with the Bury St Edmunds Town Centre Gift Card.

Business Support Manager at Our Bury St Edmunds BID Mike Kirkham said: “Research has shown that in recent years one of the most popular choices for businesses and corporate gifting has been a gift card, above rewards like hampers or even cash bonuses. It gives a level of choice in spending it and doesn’t have to be spent all at once. There is now also a strong demand for e-gift cards because of the widespread use of digital wallets and smart devices.

“We’ve been proud of the way the Bury St Edmunds Town Centre Gift Card has grown in the five years since its launch. Our digital option, introduced last year, presents a new opportunity to reward teams with an e-card that can be delivered on a date or time of their choosing, enabling planning and minimising the administration involved in gifting colleagues a local reward.”

The card is Mastercard-backed and is also a great choice for individuals looking for a Secret Santa gift for a colleague. To buy the card as an individual gift couldn’t be simpler. It can be ordered online either as a card that’s posted out or as an e-card and a number of shops in the town centre also stock the card where it can be picked up free of charge and loaded with the gift amount online.

For more information visit www.ourburystedmunds.com. Businesses wishing to purchase as a corporate gift should contact Mike Kirkham by email at mike.kirkham@ourburystedmunds.com or by calling 07885 990713.

Bury St Edmunds has made the finals of the Dog Friendly Awards 2025 in the Most Dog Friendly Town/City category.

Last year the town scooped first prize and was named the UK’s Most Dog Friendly Town.

The awards run by Dog Friendly Magazine, will take place at The Kennel Club HQ in London on November 20. The three finalists are Bury St Edmunds, Cockermouth, and Keswick.

The town has had its own Dog Friendly Bury St Edmunds scheme for the last five years to let visitors know where you can bring your four-legged pal. More than 150 businesses are signed up.

Wherever the #dogfriendlybse paw print logo sticker is displayed in windows, businesses will welcome dogs in a town-wide and beyond initiative from Bury St Edmunds Town Council, Camp Tails Doggy Daycare, Our Bury St Edmunds BID (Business Improvement District) and Bury St Edmunds and Beyond.

Dog Friendly businesses in the town centre are also marked with a blue paw on the Our Bury St Edmunds BID Town Map.

With dog-friendly accommodation, cafes and restaurants, plus attractions and days out that your pooch will love, the historic town and surrounding towns and villages are the ideal place to enjoy a short break or holiday with every member of the family – including the furry variety!

Jon Kay, Owner of Camp Tails Doggy Daycare, said: “I’m absolutely thrilled that Bury St Edmunds has once again been recognised as one of the most dog-friendly towns in the country — for the third year in a row! This recognition is something our whole community can be proud of, reflecting the wonderful collaboration between dog owners, local businesses, Our Bury St Edmunds BID, the local council, and Camp Tails.

“We’re excited at the prospect of winning for the second consecutive year, but being a finalist alone is already a fantastic achievement. It truly highlights Bury St Edmunds’ deep-rooted love of dogs. From shops and pubs to galleries and even our cathedral, well-behaved dogs are welcome almost everywhere here — it’s part of what makes our town so special!”

The DogFriendly Awards is an opportunity to recognise and reward dog friendly places and pet businesses that go the extra mile for the benefit of the UK’s 12.5 million dogs and their owners. Winners of the DogFriendly Awards in each of the categories are chosen by public vote.

Chief Executive of Our Bury St Edmunds BID, Mark Cordell said: “We were absolutely delighted that we won the UK’s Most Dog Friendly Town award last year and I am very pleased we are finalists this year. The town has always been an authentically dog friendly place to visit but thanks to the dog friendly scheme, started by Jon Kay at Camp Tails Doggy Daycare and Bury St Edmunds Town Council, people can see easily and clearly which venues they can take their dog into.

“It hasn’t escaped my notice that the winners are being announced on St Edmund’s Day this year, let’s hope that’s a good omen.”

The town now also has dog friendly film screenings at Abbeygate Cinema, dog friendly tours of the town, and even an annual dogs of the cathedral calendar for St Edmundsbury Cathedral.

To find out more about Dog Friendly Bury St Edmunds visit www.dogfriendlybse.co.uk

To find out more about the awards visit https://www.dogfriendly.co.uk/awards

An activity trail around Bury St Edmunds town centre that commemorated the 80th anniversary of VE Day has been hailed such a success by businesses and participants alike, that a second one marking the anniversary of VJ day will start next week. As with the earlier trail those who find all 10 themed items displayed in local businesses will be entered into a draw with a £100 gift card as the top prize.

The VJ Day 80th Year Commemorative Trail – which starts on Monday July 21 as the school summer holidays get underway will be open to all ages and involves discovering 10 different objects that have a World War II theme. Participating businesses will each display a poster and those who wish to take part in the competition will only need to find each of the 10 different items once.

The trail and competition are organised by Our Bury St Edmunds Business Improvement District (BID). Its Chief Executive Mark Cordell said: “When we launched the VE Day 80th Anniversary Trail in the spring, so many businesses wanted to be part of it that it was one of our most successful ever. And this time around, all the opportunities to display an item were snapped up within 24 hours, so I’m delighted that our member businesses are so engaged with these activities.

“Once again, we are offering three Bury St Edmunds Town Centre Gift Cards of £100, £75 and £50 as the prizes. It’s a perfect family activity for the school holidays as it doesn’t need to be completed in one visit and you may discover shops and businesses that you’ve never visited before.”

The entry form for the trail can be downloaded from Ourburystedmunds.com and will also be available in every participating business on the trail. It can also be collected from visitor information points at The Apex, Moyse’s Hall Museum and the Cathedral shop. The competition runs until September 7.

Full details including terms and conditions and how to enter the prize draw can be found on our VJ Day Trail Page.

Bury St Edmunds Tour Guides have teamed up with businesses in the town centre to launch a new Food & Drink Tour in Suffolk’s Foodie Capital.

The Tour Guides have worked with Our Bury St Edmunds BID and BID member businesses on the new tour which launches on Thursday 26 June and will run on selected Thursday afternoons during the summer from 2pm to 4.30pm.

Tour participants will enjoy a two and a half-hour food and drink themed tour of the town stopping off at six local businesses to try bite-sized samples of food and drink, hearing about the business and the local history of the building and location.

The tours seek to combine the reputation of Bury St Edmunds as the Foodie Capital of Suffolk, the popularity of the town’s guided tours and the quality of local produce and specialities available in the town.

The tour takes you through the heart of Bury St Edmunds, offering visitors a taste of the town and a chance to discover Bury’s food and drink history including Cook’s Row, the Abbot’s feasts, and how a maltster almost destroyed the town.

Along the way, guests will enjoy bite sized samples of delicious food and drink and meet the people behind the town’s independent businesses.

Mark Cordell, CEO of Our Bury St Edmunds Business Improvement District, said: “I am very proud of the reputation Bury St Edmunds has as the Foodie Capital of Suffolk and we already work closely with the fabulous Tour Guides, who provide a number of informative and enjoyable tours around our historical town. So, I thought, why not combine the two?

“My wife and I have enjoyed many a foodie tour whilst visiting towns and cities abroad and felt that the concept would work well here, and I am delighted that the Tour Guides were happy to add this tour to their repertoire. I am confident that the tours will become very popular and hopefully in due course their frequency and the number of businesses taking part will increase.”

In the first instance the guides will work with six businesses in the town, and they hope to expand this to more businesses who wish to showcase their offer as the

year progresses. The first six are Procopio’s Pantry, Adnams, Nethergate Wines, Marimba, No5 Angel Hill and The Wine Cellar.

Adrian Tindall, Chairman of Bury St Edmunds Tour Guides, said: “We’re very excited to be working with Our Bury St Edmunds BID and its members to offer this first tasting tour of the town. We shall be sharing morsels of Bury’s fascinating gastronomic history, from its medieval marketplace to the fine dining of today, while stopping off to sample some of the culinary delights of Suffolk’s Foodie Capital.”

Tickets for the Bury St Edmunds Food and Drink Tour are £25. To book visit the Bury St Edmunds Tour Guides website: www.burystedmundstourguides.org

As half term comes to an end it’s been good to see people out and about in the town centre this week – many of them clearly making the most of the school holiday. Of course on Sunday and Monday we were pleased to see so many enjoying the Our Bury St Edmunds Spring Fayre and my thanks to all who made this free-admission event another success. I hope those businesses that were open – and indeed those who got involved in the event itself – benefitted from the extra numbers in town. We didn’t have a weekend of brilliant sunshine but at least it didn’t dampen people’s spirits too much.

The next bank holiday weekend will be at the end of August of course, when the Our Bury St Edmunds Food & Drink Festival returns. We’re putting some finishing touches to the line up of cooking demonstrations at the moment and will be making an announcement about a celebrity chef for the event soon – but for now, do save the date. In the meantime, the reputation of Bury St Edmunds as Suffolk’s foodie capital continues with Bellota already seeing great reviews since opening just a month ago in Churchgate Street. It’s also been good to see work progressing at what used to be Gastrono-me too and I am looking forward to its reopening as a modern Italian Trattoria.

Meanwhile it looks like there could be some progress for some of our other units that are currently empty. The former Starlings shop which was on Cornhill and The Traverse has now been divided into two units and a new toy shop is opening in the one on The Traverse side soon. It’s always good to hear that despite challenging times for some, Bury St Edmunds is an attractive town centre for new businesses.

Our major events and others such as our VE Day 80th Anniversary Commemorative Trail, which bring people into town and showcase what our businesses offer are just one part of the work of the Business Improvement District (BID). We continue to source free training courses for skills that help businesses meet their statutory requirements including first aid and fire training. And we are currently looking to build on that to offer courses that develop various customer service skills too.

I’d like to thank all the businesses who’ve participated in the VE Day 80th Anniversary Trail. The deadline to submit an entry for the competition is Sunday (June 1) and there are Our Bury St Edmunds Gift Cards totalling £150 to be won. The card is accepted by more than 70 town centre businesses including shops, restaurants and salons and so we are not surprised at the number of entry forms that we’ve been receiving since the competition launched. If your business is participating do remind your customers that this is the final weekend of the trail.

Plans to commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day have been gathering pace in the town in recent weeks, not least with the Our Bury St Edmunds Commemorative Trail which has been kindly supported by the Bury Free Press. The number of shops and businesses taking part and displaying a trail item for participants to find has been fantastic and completed entry forms are starting to fill up our post box. The trail runs until Sunday June 1 so if you are one of the participating businesses, please do remind your customers that there is still plenty of time to find all the items. Meanwhile on Saturday May 3 many of the businesses in St Johns Street will also be hosting a variety of activities to mark the anniversary including music, face-painting and exhibits from the Rougham Control Tower Aviation Museum.

Preparations for the Our Bury St Edmunds Spring Fayre over the bank holiday weekend at the end of May are also well underway. This is a free admission event with lots of additional free activities to encourage families to visit the town centre. Of course, the idea is not just to bring people in to enjoy the town over those two days but to showcase Bury St Edmunds as somewhere they will want to visit time and time again. This year we’ll have many favourite attractions including the urban beach, astronomy, a wide variety of market stalls, face painting and some wonderful free street entertainment. The Suffolk Regiment Museum, which has supported the VE Day 80th anniversary commemorative trail, will also be there.

This is just one of our annual events to promote the town and give people reasons to visit us. Our other major event later in the year is the annual Food & Drink Festival which promotes Bury St Edmunds as Suffolk’s foodie capital. We are also planning another trail over the school summer holidays, bringing a skating rink in for the Christmas holidays and will have our usual Christmas Lights Event in November.

We know that April has been a difficult month for many businesses as changes to National Insurance Contributions and business rate relief came into effect. We do appreciate that this will affect ‘High Street’ businesses including retail and the hospitality sector. The BID will continue to seek benefits for members that can help in these circumstances – and we do have our programme of free training courses to help you meet your statutory obligations. Our Level 3 Emergency First Aid at Work and Fire Marshal courses remain among the most popular but we also have training around alcohol licensing, food safety, mental health awareness, customer service and social media. If you are a BID member business and have training requirements that we can help with or source for you please do get in touch with me at the BID office.

Now that the brighter weather has finally arrived and British Summer Time begins this weekend, I almost feel guilty mentioning Christmas. But, as you may have seen in the news recently, Our Bury St Edmunds BID is organising a free to use synthetic ice-rink at arc Shopping Centre this year for the school Christmas holidays. We are very grateful to Bury St Edmunds Town Council for funding this and a number of other activities that will form part of the Christmas In Bury St Edmunds Experience. We, and the partners we work with to generate these activities, hope this will encourage plenty of visitors to the town centre at this very important trading time for businesses.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, as there is so much going on in the town in the coming weeks. We are just days away from the launch of our trail to commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day. It involves businesses across the town displaying special commemorative items in their windows. Find all ten and you could be in with a chance of winning a prize. Entry forms are available from tourism points at The Apex and Cathedral, in the Bury Free Press next week and the ourburystedmunds.com website. We are very grateful to all those supporting this free fun activity for all the family – our history-themed trails have always been popular, but this is one of our best supported ever.

This weekend it’s Mothers’ Day so if you haven’t booked somewhere to celebrate on Sunday you don’t have much time. As the foodie capital of Suffolk we have plenty of choice here in Bury St Edmunds. Our hospitality establishments continue to be recognised nationally with recent success for Alex and Lisa Rotherham at Bay Tree Café who’ve had their Kedgeree featured in National Geographic Traveller Food magazine.

And if you are looking for a last-minute gift idea then why not pick up an Our Bury St Edmunds Gift Card which will allow Mum to choose from more than 70 different businesses that accept it in the town centre. Visit ourburystedmunds.com to purchase it as an e-card or find out where you can pick up a card in town and load it with the amount you want to give straight away.

It’s pleasing to see new businesses opening in the town. Anagram Audio is moving into Churchgate Street offering all aspects of hi-fi equipment. And while they are finalising the shop premises you can browse all they offer online.

Finally, next week Our Bury St Edmunds BID officially starts its fourth term of serving the town centre and our 16th year of operating. We are here to support our business members and work with you so, as ever, if there is something that we can help with do please get in touch. If we can’t help directly, we can usually signpost to somewhere that can.