‘Reinventing’ city centre’s shopping And events offer

The boss of the company chosen to oversee the delivery of Peterborough’s BID has spoken of the challenging time ahead.

Paul Clement, is the chief executive of place-shaping experts Locus, which has just been named as the management company for Peterborough’s Improvement District, which officially launches on April 1.

The BID secured a 84 per cent vote in favour from the 419 businesses that sit inside the BID boundaries - roughly the city centre - which has tasked it with four priorities plus £1.8 million to spend over five years.

The priorities are ensuring the city offers a well-managed, welcoming and safe city centre - hosting events to create a memorable experience for all city centre users, building a business community in the city centre and extensive marketing of the city.

But the creation of the Peterborough BID comes as shops and retail centres face an upheaval in the way customers shop.

More people are shopping online and outside of traditional shopping hours, there is greater use of click and collect and there is a growing tendency to see shops as experienceled places to browse rather than to buy. City centres are looking to rely less on retail and to find space for facilities such as doctors, dentists, NHS centres, charitable organisations. The aim will be to have an entrepreneurial approach to attracting this type of facility into the city centre.

Mr Clement said: “The great opportunity for this BID though is that it is involved at the core of reshaping the city.

“Peterborough has seen a major retailer, John Lewis, close. It is at a moment in time where the future of retail is bound to change.

“More retailers are trading online, more doing click and collect, more doing experience-led showrooms. We are starting to get a mix in the city change.

“So we will see different types of use of retail outlets and more people will come to live in the city.’’

He added: “The key for this BID is how does it have a seat at the top table when the discussions about the future of the city take place - that’s the real

ly interesting bit. The city has some finance from the Towns Funds. It is how that money is spent in a strategic approach to modernising and reinventing the city in a fast changing landscape. That is the real challenge and is one that the BID board is up for.

“Peterborough has potential as a regional attraction but it now has to get ahead of the changes that are happening to reinvent and start intervening where customers would expect.

“A lot of retailers I have spoken to in Peterborough say they are trading quite well but we have to be realistic about the city needs to change.”

But Mr Clement was adamant that the decisions about the future of the city will be made by Peterborough businesses.

Ipswich-based Locus has worked in a number of cities but Mr Clement said its purpose was not to impose ideas about how the city centre should look or work.

He said: “The BID board, led by Mark Broadhead, will make decisions about what happens around this BID.

“This will be Peterborough’s BID run by Peterborough business poeple.

“We can offer advice about how Peterborough can best punch above its weight, what are the interventions that are required and we can use our experience, our knowledge of other places or build on some of the ideas that are more locally based.

“We will be attending board meetings to advise as much as it’s needed.”

For the moment, Mr Clement is focused on the recruitment of the right person to be Peterborough’s BID manager.

The BID manager will be responsible for appointing a team of staff - there will be on street staff and people looking after the projects.

Mr Clement said: “We don’t run the BID but provide back office, secretarial and HR support and technical advice about how BIDs are run as well as strategic advice to the board when required.

“At the moment our main focus is to recruit a BID manager. We’ve had a number of applications but the deadline is not for a few weeks.

“Once we have that person it will allow the board to focus on the early stage of delivery of the BID.”

He added: “It an interesting time to be doing this with the economy in a fairly fragile state, post Covid changes of consumer habit and a real rethink of the purpose of towns and city centres perhaps slightly away from retail - it is a good opportunity for this BID to launch in a very different environment to that in which other BIDs have launched.

“It’ll be an interesting challenge for everybody.”

Paul Clement, chief executive of Locus.

The BID area.