Welcome to St Albans BID, a Business Improvement District which is business led and business funded and formed to improve a defined area  (see our map here). We work with local businesses and sometimes residents also located within the area to create a vibrant, thriving, sustainable and resilient St Albans city centre by creating and investing in projects and initiatives that really deliver value back to the BID area, benefiting those who live, work and play here whilst promoting St Albans as a premier destination and in doing so driving a prosperous local economy.

We collaborate with statutory and non-statutory partners on issues that impact or enhance the BID area however BID does not replace any work responsibility of those partners. The role of BIDs is to provide additionality to St Albans.

St Albans BID is now in it’s second elected term between 2022-2027. You can find out more about the second term and our business plan here.

Lets start with what we do, we have 4 main areas of focus;

We act as the Destination Management organisation for St Albans. This means we are responsible for for promoting and marketing St Albans as a tourist destination. This can be to our local community or further afield in the UK and abroad. As part of this we run the enjoystalbans.com website and social media channels working with partners and agencies to ensure we promote St Albans far and wide.

Alongside that we enable a wealth of activities such as family trails and street entertainment plus seasonal events for both locals and visitors. All these efforts help the city thrive for businesses and residents. We analyse this through various measure including our footfall analysis which you can read here.

Our second work focus is to To ensure the city centre is a wonderful place to visit and to increase dwell time for the benefit of businesses. In order to do this we look to continually enhance the street scene with seasonal and festive decorations or street entertainments.

We may also fund additional street cleaning, litter picks, jet washing and graffiti removal and this will be over and above the core local authority services.

Sponsorship opportunities are available to support delivery of seasonal enhancements such as floral planters and Christmas decorations. Please do get in touch if interested.

BID supports initiatives such as the Shop Safe radio scheme used by city centre shops and venues to help improve security through sharing of information as it happens. The radio scheme is supported by having a direct link to the local CCTV service.

We liaise with a wide network of safety and security organisations such as the Police in support of activity that reduces criminal activity in the city centre.

If you are a local business, we suggest you sign up to Hertfordshire’s Business Watch to get alerts and crime prevention advice from your local policing team.

We help and support BID businesses by creating greater strategic opportunities, such as the savings that can be made through commercial waste agreement (see more HERE) .

We offer a coordinated business voice and will advocate for our businesses to ensure your views, opinions, and suggestions are heard.

We manage the St Albans Gift Card scheme to keep spend local. Does your business accept the Gift Card? If not please take a look here and get in touch.

We also offer free marketing support across all of our channels whether on the enjoystalbans.com website or social media.

Make sure you receive our newsletter by registering with us HERE and get updates on our work, local opportunities for engagement in activity or training.

BID businesses can hire gazebos and tables and chairs for events.

We will consider approaches for funding contributions or partnership support if you have an idea that will create a reason to visit the city centre as a destination, enhance the street scene, reduce crime or benefit BID businesses. Read our criteria here.

If you like what you’ve read here but are not a BID business (within the BID area), yet operate your business in St Albans and wish to benefit from accessing our services, consider taking out an affordable annual subscription as an Associate Member. Details can be found here.