Night markets coming to Bexleyheath Broadway

Bexleyheath town centre is set to see night markets across this coming summer.

The first night market will take place this Friday 27 June with subsequent dates on Friday 25 July and Friday 29 August.

The event will see food stalls, traders and live entertainment.

The events are being put on by the Bexleyheath Business Improvement District (BID) with many BIDs now common across London in 73 areas of the capital within numerous boroughs.

Notable absence

BIDs are established when businesses within an area – normally a town centre – come together to fund events and street cleaning. It’s a scheme I recently mentioned in relation to the declines already evident at Woolwich’s latest multi-million town centre upgrades.

Greenwich and Lewisham boroughs are unusual in London for having no BIDs to assist with improving town centres and lowering costs to taxpayers in financially difficult times.

Whilst they require a ballot of businesses to implement, councils usually need to take the lead. There’s never been any sign this happening in Greenwich, for example, to assist with keeping Woolwich’s improvements in good condition.

With Woolwich town centre home to many national businesses ranging from hotel groups such as Travelodge and Premier Inn to various banks and High Street names, it’s plausible they could muster additional funds if the will is there.

Lewisham is similar and is also seeing a multi-million pound town centre upgrade.

Reinvest savings

Not only does a lack of potential revenue from not pushing for BIDs impact maintenance of expensive town centre projects but also removes potential savings to the public purse to reinvest elsewhere. One example currently being Greenwich looking to sell a building in a contentious process in Shooters Hill.

Greenwich state they simply have to sell and cannot afford modest sums to renovate the structure beside Shrewsbury House. Well, not exactly true.

There are ways they could allocate funds via income such as that obtained via Section 106 and the Community Infrastructure Levy (similar projects regularly gain income from CIL across London) or utilising money saved when BIDs provide funding.

For example, instead of Greenwich using taxpayers money to put on events in Woolwich town centre the BID funding pot could do so, with savings used elsewhere. They simply havn’t chosen to do so.