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Term Two Newsletter #4
Creating a world-class experience for all who visit, live and work in Cambridge, a global city
October 2020
Safely welcoming visitors return to Cambridge city centre All sectors of our own city have felt the unwelcome impact of Covid-19. Cambridge is well placed to make a strong comeback, and here at Cambridge BID we are well positioned to aid that recovery. Since March 2020, we have been assisting businesses in the following ways:
Business Support • Working with Cambridge City Council to assist hundreds of businesses get their government grants using our detailed database • Helping many businesses with their furlough issues • Hosting weekly webinars guiding businesses through these challenging times, including advice on closing their business, grants, furlough scheme, Cbils, Bounce Back Loans and more • Developing a weekly footfall report that allows businesses to see changes very quicky and respond accordingly • Continuing our street cleaning and rapid response programme • Encouraging dozens of businesses to apply for licences for table and chairs to increase their space and trade • Distributing free social distancing floor stickers to over 200 businesses including many multiples • Unfurloughing from June 15th our onstreet Ambassador team to give advice to businesses about queuing and onstreet help to visitors to the city • Continued to pay Cambac business crime partnership membership fees for Levy Payers who have a Cambac radio
Local Authority collaboration • Working with Cambridge City Council for them to offer free parking to NHS and Key workers from April and this continues today • Lobbying the County Council to not introduce 10am - 6pm road restrictions across the city centre • Working with Cambridge City Council on the introduction of the current £1 per hour parking offer from Aug - Oct 2020 • Working with Mayor James Palmer on the Cambridge and Peterborough city reopening project
Marketing and PR • Supporting a comprehensive PR and Marketing campaign around residents and visitors returning to Cambridge • Creating the current 'Opening Cambridge Safety' campaign that is running in the Cambridge Independent newspaper
National Lobbying Working with the British BIDs advisory board we have lobbied central Government on a number of key issues • Supporting the national 'Raise the bar' Campaign for businesses with a rateable value of more than £51K who did not get one of the main government grants • Supporting the initial furlough scheme extension to the end of October • Making Government aware the initial CBIL’s loan scheme was not working, resulting in the successful Bounce Back loan scheme being created
How is Cambridge Performing? 2020 has been a year like no other but as we start to adjust to a new way of living, understanding how Cambridge is performing is key. Cambridge BID publishes a range of documents to help in this process. Each Tuesday we publish footfall from the previous week so businesses like yours can see how footfall faired compared to the previous week and year both as a whole and by counter location. We have seven count lines across the city: Sidney Street; Bridge Street; Fitzroy Street; Kings Parade; Rose Crescent; Market Hill and Station Road. We also publish monthly footfall data for these seven counters in the few days after the month finishes.
Our latest ‘Hidden Gems’ campaign shows much promise for the future. With a clear brand identity, including window vinyls that add colour to vacant shop units, the initiative seeks to produce online content and social media advertising campaigns - such as ‘Meet the Owners’ video interviews and ‘Curated Cambridge’ online themed guides.
Our monthly Cambridge Performance Report brings together footfall counter information alongside footfall data from shopping centres, car parking usage and both Park & Ride and Guided Busway usage. It also shows the work of our City Ambassadors by indicating how many visitors they have seen, for example. All this information provides a good basis to understand how Cambridge is performing and responding to this challenging period.
We have been working hard on our new consumer website which is packed full of campaigns to promote Cambridge, our projects and local businesses. Cambridge is a wonderful city full of exciting independent businesses just waiting to be discovered. We wanted to emphasise the importance of supporting your local businesses, and celebrate those who love to share their creative ventures with the community!
All of the above information about be found at: cambridgebid.co.uk/city-performance
View our campaigns: love-cambridge.com/hidden-gems/
Hidden Gems
Purple Flag Celebrations Nationally, October is Purple Flag Month – towns and cities with purple flag status come together to celebrate the fact that they have a safe and vibrant evening economy. The current pandemic means that we have had to alter original plans to celebrate Cambridge’s purple flag status but it will not go unnoticed. As a City, we are immensely proud of being awarded Purple Flag in 2019 and this October we will be highlighting some of the attributes that lead to us achieving Purple Flag status and some ideas for how you can enjoy a safe and vibrant night out this Autumn. More information can be found at: cambridgebid.co.uk/purple-flag
Visit Cambridge Many of you would have read with concern that Visit Cambridge has closed. We can announce that a consortium of Cambridge BID, Cambridge City Council and the University of Cambridge Museums have bought the assets of Visit Cambridge and we are working on launching a new model to develop our visitor offer for the city. This will involve some new investment and on behalf of our businesses that are part of this economy we feel this is the right thing to do.
Meet the Owners - Get Involved We think it’s incredibly important to get to know the experts behind our local businesses, to understand their inspirations and motivations and see the friendly faces behind independent operations. We've been uploading interviews with your favourite local business owners on our love-cambridge.com website. If your business would like to be interviewed and featured in the series, please email Kristian.Foreman@cambridgebid.co.uk
Restaurant Week
Christmas Lights Switch On In light of the current situation we have recognised that organising a large scale, public event cannot be done safely therefore, this year we are doing things slightly differently. The annual Christmas Lights Switch On Event this year will be moving online! Working in partnership with Star Radio, Cambridge BID will coordinate and deliver an afternoon of festive fun on air on Sunday 15th November to honour the annual event and to really kick off Christmas in Cambridge. We will have local community acts perform on the radio and will be encouraging people to enjoy the event from the comfort of their own homes. We will also have a live video stream of the lights being switched on at the regular time of 5pm. Star Radio can be found at 100.7 FM
Love Cambridge Love Christmas Shopping Guide Work has started on the Love Christmas Love Shopping Magazine for 2020 and will be going to print at the end of October, ready for a November distribution. Print run will be around 80,000 of which approx. 70,000 will be delivered through letterboxes in and around Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk & Essex. It will also be available to pick up for free from Park & Rides, hotels & shopping centres. The magazine is designed to promote Cambridge at Christmas and encourage people to come into the city during the festive period to shop, eat, drink and enjoy the vast number of cultural offerings the city hosts during the winter months.
Rapid Response Operating between 8am - 11am, 7-daysa week, we would love to see this service used more. If you are walking through the city on your way to work and see some mess, call it in. We want to encourage everyone to take pride in the city, not just your place of work. Remember, they will clean up bodily fluids, broken glass, pigeon fouling, graffiti and other detritus. Call them on 07773 369 117
Our first ever Restaurant Week last year was a resounding success as more than 40 of the city’s best eateries signed up to offer special set menus priced at £5, £10 or £15 for the duration of the event. Thousands of local foodies visited our website to download vouchers, discovering new places at which to enjoy an affordable meal out. We were due to repeat this event in March 2020 but, sadly, it coincided with the beginning of lockdown. However the event will be back in 2021, and we will update you with more information closer to the time.
Love Cambridge Gift Card Are you looking to thank your staff for their work during this challenging time or thinking about how to treat your staff given the Christmas party season is likely to look a bit different this year? If the answer is YES then the Love Cambridge Gift Card is the perfect choice – not only would you be providing your staff with a Gift Card that gives them a fantastic choice of how to spend it but you will also be doing your bit to support Cambridge and our local economy. Gift Cards can be purchased individually or in batches. Cambridge BID has continued to sell Love Cambridge Gift Cards throughout 2020 and sales in July and August have been strong. To date over £12,000 worth of Gift Cards have been sold in 2020 and these cards are accepted in over 200 BID businesses across the city.
If you would like to discuss how the Love Cambridge Gift Card can work for your business please get in touch with Helen (helen.hames@cambridgebid.co.uk)
Other Ongoing Projects • Our Taxi Marshalls have also returned to ensure taxi queues are well managed late at night • We continue to support Cambridge Street Aid that works with and supports homeless people • We are still leading on the delivery of our citywide ‘Cows about Cambridge’ public art project which has been rescheduled to Spring 2020
Are you up to date on Google? Visitors to Cambridge city centre and your business will likely use Google as a first point of call to check on information and opening hours. Ensure your business listing is up to date via Google My Business - a great free tool from Google to aid promotion. It’s likely that your business is already listed on Google, but if you haven’t yet ‘claimed it’ or updated the information then you could be missing out on traffic to your site, customers to your business and ultimately sales.
Websites & Weekly Updates Find out up-to-date information about all of Cambridge BID's projects, initiatives and events, access resources, sign up to our weekly e-newsletter and read the latest news about Cambridge BID businesses at: www.cambridgebid.co.uk Have you visited our consumer site? It is packed full of campaigns to promote Cambridge, our projects and local businesses. www.love-cambridge.com
@LoveCambridge_ @LoveCambridge_ @LoveCambs
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For information on any projects mentioned in this newsletter please get in touch: info@cambridgebid.co.uk