Your View on the BID

Additional services in a BID are identified by its members so we want to know what you think needs to be improved in the town centre. Help us to help you by answering our business questionnaire and identifying the key issues in our area.

The BID questionnaire is currently available for completion by local business via the SurveyUs online survey system and if you've got a couple of minutes we would very much appreciate if you would click this link to tell us your views via the survey right now.

Great Yarmouth’s fight against crime, the need for more ethnic eateries and better street furniture, craft markets and improved Christmas lights are all issues raised on BID questionnaires.

Linda Sedgwick, manager of Boots the Chemist, said feedback from customers and staff proved the value the street wardens brought to the town. She said: “Street wardens have made a vast difference to public safety and I am sure this has had a knock-on effect to customers coming into town. We need cover on a Sunday as crime is a seven-day-a-week event.”

Sue Adcock, owner of Market Row schoolwear specialist, The Cloakroom, was strongly in favour of the BID. She said: “I would like to see Great Yarmouth as a clean, safe place to shop. But I think everybody should pay for the services and the benefits that they get.”

One of the results to emerge from the questionnaire was that half of those who said they would be happy to pay for a BID were not currently members of the Town Centre Partnership. One of those, Mike Huke of Yarmouth Pet Store in Victoria Arcade, said he had left the Town Centre Partnership because other, bigger stores were not contributing. He said: “As a small independent you don’t have money to throw around. I don’t mind paying my bit but what upset me about the Town Centre Partnership is that one or two of the big stores weren’t paying. With a BID everybody would have to pay.”

Mr Huke said he was in favour of the improvements in the Market Place and he would like to see the end of King Street get similar treatment. Other suggestions included encouraging local crafts people, promoting bus visits from the centre to the Broads and increased fines for public drunkenness.