Following 15 years working at Hinckley BID to promote our wide range of attractive shops, popular service businesses and a huge choice of hospitality venues, I have decided that it is time for somebody with more energy and who is in better health to take over from me.

I am therefore delighted to tell you that after an extensive search and some detailed interviews, the Board of the Hinckley Town Centre Partnership Ltd t/a Hinckley BID have appointed Helen Crouch to take over my position as Hinckley BID Manager Designate with effect from August 5th and I will be working with Helen throughout August to help her to understand the role. I have been asked to remain on the Board* to assist Helen if she needs my advice at any time. Our part-time Assistant BID Manager, Martina Smullen, will continue in her essential role.

As many of you are aware, I have worked continuously during those years to help many town-centre businesses in a wide variety of ways, and to increase footfall through organising some hugely popular annual free events such as the Soapbox Derby and the Classic Motorshow. These are now expertly organised by Hannah O’Dell, our part-time Events Manager – details of these and many more free town-centre events can be found on our website www.hinckleybid.co.uk which receives thousands of ‘hits’ monthly.

When Hinckley BID was first established in 2008 there were 74 BIDs throughout the UK – there are now 326. The main task of a BID is to showcase their town centre businesses, although Hinckley goes further than most with many other promotions including our Loyalty Card scheme (12,651 now issued), our website which features a dedicated page for each business, ‘free to BID member businesses’ weekly plastics and paper/card recycling scheme (we pay the Council). Our BID website is maintained by Martina whose creative BID Buzz monthly e-Newsletter is sent to 14,000+ who have signed up for it, promoting what’s going on, and which businesses have something new or exciting to offer. Martina also deals with all aspects of our BID admin.

Helen will undoubtedly bring new ideas to the table. Her background and experience are ideally suited to this role and she will seek to meet all BID members at the earliest opportunity. Her e-mail address is helen@hinckleybid.co.uk and, so that you can recognise her, her photograph is attached.

Finally, I want to thank each and every one of you for choosing Hinckley from which to operate your business. Working in close co-operation with HBBC, including attending several of their Working Group meetings, together we are really pleased to have maintained a vacancy rate that is lower than most other Market towns.

I also want to acknowledge the time and effort that is regularly invested by the HTCP Board Members* and in particular Chairman Ian Daniels, their collective experience is an essential part of Hinckley BID’s success in bringing over 100,000 extra visitors into Hinckley each year. And especially, thank you to my two hard-working BID colleagues, Martina and Hannah, whose commitment often goes above and beyond. Working together, we help to make Hinckley the envy of many other towns.

It’s been an honour – and perhaps I will now have time to enjoy a more leisurely ‘customer’ experience at many of your businesses – and I look forward to doing just that 😊.

Wishing you all continued success,

Steve

* All HTCP-BID Board Directors are volunteers and are unremunerated in any way.