Ballot papers reach 546 city centre businesses on 7 September and must be back by 5pm on 8 October. The levy rate falls to 1.85% and £3.1m rides on it.
Around 546 businesses in St Albans city centre will decide this autumn whether the Business Improvement District carries on for another five years, and whether they keep paying for it.
The formal Notice of Ballot was issued on Wednesday 19 August by the ballot holder, Amanda Foley, who is the council’s returning officer. Ballot papers go out on Monday 7 September. They must be back by 5pm on Thursday 8 October.
The count is on Friday 9 October, and the result will be published on the council’s elections and results page.
What is being voted on
St Albans BID Limited wants a third five-year term, running from 1 April 2027 to 31 March 2032. Five years is the maximum a BID term can last under part 4 of the Local Government Act 2003.
The company’s proposal document sets out what changes and what does not:
- the boundary stays exactly as it is for the 2022 to 2027 term
- the levy rate in year one drops to 1.85% of a property’s rateable value, which the proposal describes as a reduction on the rate in the final year of the current term
- from year two the rate rises by 3% a year, so 1.90% in 2028/29 and 1.96% in 2029/30
- the most any single property can be charged in year one is £10,000, a cap that also rises 3% a year
- properties with a rateable value of £12,000 or less pay nothing
- schools and colleges are exempt, defined by the Valuation Office Agency codes EP, EL and EX
Applied across the area, the BID puts the projected new investment at “circa £3.1 million” over the five years. That budget assumes it collects 95% of what it bills, which is what it has managed over the past five years.
Technically this is a new ballot rather than a renewal ballot, because some of the businesses inside the area have changed since the last one. The council’s officers explained that point to councillors in June.
What a shop would actually pay
The proposal gives the rule rather than the bills, so the figures below are our own arithmetic from the year-one rate of 1.85%. Rateable value is not rent and not the sale price: it is the Valuation Office Agency’s assessment, and it is the same figure business rates are calculated from.
| Rateable value | Levy in 2027/28 |
|---|---|
| £12,000 or less | Nothing, below the threshold |
| £15,000 | £277.50 |
| £30,000 | £555 |
| £60,000 | £1,110 |
| £150,000 | £2,775 |
| £540,541 or more | £10,000, the cap |
The levy is billed separately from the business rates bill. If a business is summonsed for both debts, the council’s report notes, it pays two sets of costs.
Last time, 95 votes settled it
A BID ballot has to clear two thresholds at once. A majority of those who vote must vote yes, and the properties voting yes must carry more rateable value between them than the properties voting no.
Turnout is where this gets interesting. At the last ballot, on 3 February 2022, the declaration of result recorded:
- 145 votes cast, after two papers were rejected
- 95 of them in favour
- £8,474,250 of rateable value voting, of which £6,147,250 voted yes
- a turnout of 32.2%
So 95 yes votes bound every levy payer in the city centre for five years. On the same turnout this time, the third term would be settled by a few dozen ballot papers either way.
What the BID’s own survey found
The proposal includes the consultation the company ran with levy payers. It drew 187 responses, of whom 167 (89.3%) said they were aware of the BID and what it does.
On the question that matters, 185 businesses answered:
- 120 (64.86%) said they would vote in favour of a third term
- 21 (11.35%) said they would vote against
- 44 (23.78%) were undecided
The strongest support was for the visible things. In all, 160 backed continuing the visitor and customer guides, 158 the visitor communications, 154 the events and the seasonal lighting, and 153 the floral displays. On safety, 140 supported keeping the Shop Safe radio scheme, although only 63 said they were aware of it in the first place.
The council is a levy payer too, and it has a veto
Two things about the council’s role are easy to miss.
It pays the levy. The council has 14 properties inside the BID area, costing it about £35,600 this year, and officers estimate roughly £32,670 in 2027/28 under the proposed rules. It therefore gets 14 votes, one per property, the same as any other ratepayer.
How the council will cast those votes has not been decided in public. On 23 June the Strategy and Resources Committee handed that decision to its Strategic Director for Customer, Business and Corporate Support. The director will consult Councillor Paul de Kort and Councillor Giles Fry, the lead councillors for strategy and for resources. The same meeting instructed the ballot holder to run the ballot, carried with no dissent.
Separately, section 51 of the 2003 Act gives the council a veto. It lasts up to 14 working days after the ballot, and it can only be used on two narrow grounds:
- that the arrangements would clash materially with a published council policy
- that they would put a significantly disproportionate and inequitable financial burden on a class of ratepayer
Officers told councillors they were “not aware of businesses having raised concerns during the consultation phase about a disproportionate burden”.
Running the ballot costs the council money as well. Civica Election Services quoted £4,375 to administer it, against £5,000 set aside in the budget. If fewer than 20% of eligible voters vote in favour, the bill passes to St Albans BID Limited.
What it means for you
If you run a business in the city centre. Check whether a Notice of Ballot arrived in the week of 19 August. If it did, you are on the voters’ list and a ballot paper is coming on 7 September. If it did not and you think it should have, contact the council’s electoral services team, whose details are on the elections page, before the papers go out.
Then note the four deadlines:
- 5pm, Monday 28 September: last date to appoint a proxy, in writing, to Civica Election Services
- 5pm, Saturday 3 October: last date to cancel a proxy
- Friday 2 October: the date from which replacements are issued if your paper never arrived, so ask before then
- Monday 5 October: the last date a spoilt paper can reach the scrutineer to be swapped
An unsigned or unmarked paper is void and is not counted. So is a duplicate: if two papers come back with the same number, both are thrown out.
If you do not run a business here. You have no vote, but the outcome is visible on the street. The BID pays for the Christmas lights, the floral displays, the banners and bunting, the seasonal trails, the Shop Safe radio scheme and the St Albans Gift Card. If the ballot fails, the current term still runs to 31 March 2027, and the council’s report warns it may have to absorb some of that work itself.
The vote lands in the same year the district council is being wound up. St Albans is due to be replaced by a new West Hertfordshire unitary authority. A new parish council for the city centre takes effect on 1 April 2027. That is the same day the proposed BID term would start.
St Albans BID Limited is a company limited by guarantee, number 10625613, with its registered office at Suite 2, 7 French Row. Its side of the argument, and copies of the proposal, are on its own website at stalbansbid.com.
Have your say
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