The directors are due to meet later this week to sign off the budget ahead of the start of the BID.
Management at the Amazing CMK BID will be working alongside Milton Keynes Council to ensure that the BID improves areas that the council is unable to service as it would like due to austerity cuts. This includes landscaping, grass cutting and street cleaning.
The BID wants to implement a park and ride shuttle scheme to service the city centre to ease the pressure on parking in the city centre.
It also aims to increase the number of street wardens in the city centre in order to tackle unsocial behaviour.
Milton Keynes city centre manager Melanie Beck said: “My hope is that in the next 12 months we will see a city centre that is much cleaner and well managed.
"We do not want to take over from what the council has always done. We have worked with the council to identify where austerity has hit the standards they would have wanted to maintain without financial pressure.”
The BID will pay to have the grass cut more frequently, edge and award a contract for pest control, which, due to budget cuts, the council cannot currently implement.
Ms Beck said: “We will monitor what the council has to deliver and it will be a partnership approach. That goes across all the elements of what the BID is doing.”
Amazing CMK BID will invest around £5 million in Central Milton Keynes over the next five years. The BID, which received a 80 per cent majority from MK9-based businesses in a ballot in March, is funded by a 1.25% levy of annual business rates raised on 453 organisations whose rates bill is more than £50,000 a year.
It has a further 28 members of smaller businesses whose business rates do not reach the £50,000 mark.
The BID has identified five priorities for employees and businesses: safety; cleanliness; mobility, skills and events.
A park and ride scheme with hubs at the National Bowl and the Coachway at M1 junction 14 is high on the list to ease congestion in the city centre, as is the recruitment of more street wardens to tackle the problems of begging and the plight of the homeless.
Ms Beck said: “We want to work with the council and other agencies to find a long-term solution. It seriously impacts business on a day-to-day basis and it is not something that creates the right impression. It is a serious concern for the BID.”
The BID also wants to encourage city centre workers to enjoy the area’s offer after working hours. It expects the refurbishment of the Theatre District – now renamed 12th Street – to a more family-orientated venue to have an effect.
Ms Beck said: “It will be interesting to see how that end of Milton Keynes will be re-energised. There is a lot happening for the city and this is a great time for the BID to start work on delivering its promises.”
The BID covers an area, bordered by Milton Keynes Central railway station, Campbell Park, H6 Childs Way and H5 Portway.
Amazing CMK BID is the tenth largest in the UK in terms of annual revenue generated and the fourth largest outside London.
- The BID has confirmed the names of its board of directors after voting took place last month. The directors are:
Levy-paying businesses Ian Stuart (Heart FM); Shelley Peppard (intu); Carl Meale (Xscape); James Fairbairn (Dentons); Paul Hunt (John Lewis); Elizabeth Morris (Cineworld); Jo Lewington (Network Rail); Kevin Duffy (centre:mk).
Public Sector Tom Blackburne-Maze (Milton Keynes Council); Area Commander (Thames Valley Police); Charles Macdonald (Milton Keynes Development Partnership).
(finance director).
