Bury Free Press BID Column April 2025
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.
