Bury Free Press BID Column January 2026
The start of the year is always a good time to look at the ‘health of the high street’ and see how Bury St Edmunds town centre is faring against the bigger economic picture. While the weather may be grey and gloomy, I’m pleased to report that Bury St Edmunds has a brighter outlook than most UK market towns.
It’s always good to see new businesses opening up – whether that’s new to the town or relocating within the town. Recently Taco Bell, Adnams, Trespass and Play Café have all opened and in the pipeline we have dental practices, a brewery bar and a coffee shop. I understand that some of our larger vacant units may soon be in new ownership so I’m hopeful this will lead to new tenants in due course too. The number of empty units continues to fall and currently stands at 5.2% – the national average is just over 13%.
Footfall has remained steady too – we saw a negligible change in 2025 to the previous year, down just 0.2% – again comparing very favourably to other town centres nationally and in the East of England. It does appear that people looking to shop and socialise like to visit Bury St Edmunds and on behalf of all our businesses I’d like to thank everyone who supports our town centre in what we know are still challenging times for businesses and households alike.
Something that really does help our town centre is the Bury St Edmunds Gift Card. It’s an initiative that we introduced just over five years ago to encourage people to ‘Shop Local’ after the pandemic and it’s gone from strength to strength. It can now be spent in 85 BID member businesses in the town centre and since its launch, cards to the value of well over £200k have been purchased – money that has been locked into our local economy.
Among the places accepting our gift card are restaurants, cafes and pubs – hardly surprising given that Bury St Edmunds is Suffolk’s foodie capital. A great success of 2025 was the Food and Drink Tours that we launched in partnership with the town’s Tour Guides. This two and a half hour food and drink excursion works with 15 town centre businesses to offer a six-stop walking tour with tasters at each one and the chance to learn more about the stories behind their buildings and the history of the town – which, while famous over the years for brewing, was also known for Abbots’ feasts and much more in years gone by.
Of course this is a time for looking forward too. Here at Our Bury St Edmunds BID we are planning our programme of events for 2026 to encourage more people to visit the town centre. We’ll be announcing details of some of these very soon.
