Advancing Aberystwyth are a private not-for-profit organisation set up to run the BID. We are run by a Board of Directors who represent businesses and various partners including, Town Council, County Council, University and Menter Aberystwyth. All BIDs across the UK are governed by strict legislation. The legislation we are governed by are the ‘The Business Improvement Districts (Wales) Regulations 2005’ – which can be found here.

The Directors are made up of representatives from levy paying businesses. We also have one representative from key partners in the town including Ceredigion County Council, Aberystwyth Town Council, Aberystwyth University and Menter Aberstwyth. A full list of our directors can be found here. Any levy paying business is welcome to join the board.

In our first term, the levy collection was approximately £160,000 per year. We will use this as a guide in our Business Plan to plan projects for the next few years, however this is subject to change. In our first term we also secured an additional £230,000 from other sources including grants and commercial activities.

This claim is totally false. Every eligible voter will receive a ballot paper. As the BID company, Advancing Aberystwyth have NO involvement whatsoever with the running of the ballot. It is being run by an external company – CIVICA (formerly known as the Electoral Reforms Services), who are legally bound to run a fair ballot. They will receive details of all eligible voters from the Council Rates department and they will then send out voting papers to everyone. Advancing Aberystwyth also gave businesses the chance to provide an alternative address (due to lockdown). This information will be passed to the council and then CIVICA. If businesses did not provde an alternative address, the papers will autmomatically go to the address that council holds for those businesses.

Please note – due to the 2017 Business Rates Valuation, some businesses may no longer be part of the process as they were in 2016.

Our Renewal Ballot date is March 31st 2021. At the beginning of 2020, in order to ensure we run a fair and legal ballot process, we received support/advice from an external consultant in relation to the legal process of running a Renewal Ballot. Since then, all of the work in relation to the ballot e.g. consultation, BID term agreements, business plan and project development, PR & Communications etc, has been (and will be) carried out by Advancing Aberystwyth staff.

The Mill Street Fund is a £250,000 gift from the Mill Street Developers to the town. The money is being held by Ceredigion County Council, and we can apply for the funding on specific projects that have a long lasting legacy on the town.

No it did not. We had hoped to have made more progress in developing the major projects, however COVID-19 meant those plans were put on hold in 2020. As a result, the money is still available for us to apply for in our 2nd BID term (if successful). Meaning we will still be in a position to deliver these major projects.

We want to use the money to develop major projects that have a big impact on the town. Part of it was used to fund the Ice Rink in 2018. The remainder will be used as match funding to develop other major projects.

No. Cleaning streets is the council’s remit and is not a project we have funded. Before businesses re-opened after the first national lockdown, there was a lot of negativity regarding the ‘look of the town’. As a result, to make the town look more appealing to visitors, we decided to clear and weed some shopfront premises (which is not the responsibility of the council) and hired a contractor for a fee of £5 per businesses. The contractor also did some weeding of pavements, which was a service that we did not pay for.

No. We are governed by national BID Regualtions, which state all the projects we deliver in the town are in addition to those provided by Ceredigion County Council and Aberystwyth Town Council. We have in the past ‘added value’ to services e.g. Christmas Lights which are delivered by the Town Council. Also, we temporarily transformed the old paddling pool in to a Giant Sand Pit, as this was no longer a service delivered by the council, and without this intervention it would have remained empty and unused. We often work closely with the Council in order to deliver projects successfully e.g. to gain a licence for an event or obtain permission to use land. However, we have never taken over a council service.

No. The University do not receive any discount and pay the full 1.25% of the rateable value of each of their premises within the BID area.

No. Every single businesses pays 1.25% of their whole rateable value. There is no cap on payments for multi nationals.

No we did not collect the full levy. Along with other BIDs in Wales, we lobbied the Welsh Government to suspend the levy charges to businsses during 2020/21. Unfortunately, they were not prepared to do so. However, in order to support small businsses, our board decided not to collect the levy from businesses with a rateable value of £51k and under.

As well as not charging the levy to small businsses, we also provided the following support:

• Set up a new web area promoting new services and opening times of businesses during ‘lockdown’
• Offered FREE e-learning courses in partership with Coleg Ceredigion whilst businesses and staff were on furlough leave
• Provided FREE Re-opening Protection Kits for businesses
• Offered FREE COVID-19 training
• Provided FREE outdoor furniture to help hospitality businesses
• Secured a grant to provide new outdoor café areas in the town
• Provided FREE Hand Sanitiser for re-opening after second fire break lockdown
• Provided FREE facebook advertising for businesses
• Delivered a new ‘Siop Aber – Caru Aber’ ‘shop local’ Loyalty Card & Gift Voucher project 

We believe that it’s important that the town looks attractive and welcoming. As we cannot replace or duplicate services provided by the council e.g. street cleaning, we provided a new service to help improve the ‘look of the town’. Also, for individual businesses to clear their own gutter, could be quite an expensive service, therefore by us doing it in bulk was excellent value for money. We also cleared some shop fronts before businesses re-opened after the original lockdown.

We are not able to spend levy payers money on replacing existing council services e.g. refuse collecting. However, we are able to add value to those services, therefore we have funded equipment for volunteers to do litter picking, and in the future we will aim to improve this service by introducing schemes such as seagull proof bags.

The fact that we charge an admission fee for our cinemas means that they pay for themselves and no levy money is spent on them. As a result, we are making the levy money go further by being able to deliver more projects and events.

This is incorrect. Unfortunately, due to high winds, we have cancelled two of our cinema events in order to ensure public safety. When this happens, we simply choose another date and we do not get charged by the supplier for the cancelled event.

Our Ice Rink was not actually funded by our levy income. We received a grant from the Mill Street Development Fund in 2018. The income we recieve from ticket sales and sponsorship means the ice rink can return every year.

Although we were pleased to have a location so close to our businesses, the major restriction of the site we chose was space and weight, which meant we could only include a few small rides, and a small ice rink. In future years, the Ice Rink & Winterland will be moved to the Vale of Rheidol Car park, which will allow us to have a bigger Ice Rink and bigger/better rides.

The paddling pool site is the responsiobility of Ceredigion County Council and not Advancing Aberystwyth.

In 2018, we were informed that the site could no longer be used as a paddling pool as it could no longer hold water in its current state. As a result, we firstly explored the idea of creating a Splash Park. However, we were told that no long term development could take place until the Sea Defence work had been completed. Therefore, to avoid the site being empty and an ‘eyesore’ on the Prom, we came up with a short term solution, which was a ‘Giant Sand Pit’.