4:45 pm
Dr. Grail: I painfully agree with you. In one way it has not, and we have seen real growth, but still the property owner position has not changed. Property owners still wish to see a mandatory levy. We now have some concrete evidence that—despite some early good will by owners investing, particularly ahead of a ballot, to see a BID come into being—they are dropping out as time goes on. They are dropping out of property sales; there is no commitment for a new owner of a property to carry on that voluntary contribution, and some of the bigger BIDs are losing huge amounts of annual income as a result. With one owner, you may lose £100,000 a year from a previous contribution. That is a real danger, so there is definitely a problem that has not yet been resolved.
We still believe that there is an opportunity to put in a provision for a mandatory owner levy if a BID chooses to use it—not to use it everywhere, but when it is necessary. There are scenarios where it would never be used and never be workable. For instance, with huge disparate ownership it would be far too much of an administrative burden to start charging them; but where you have reasonably large portfolios you could top-slice the top 20, 25 or 30 owners with a threshold, in the same way as we do with occupiers, and raise a reasonable amount in a guaranteed and sustainable way. That, I think, is what BIDs are going to need to have in the longer term if they start having these additional occupier costs.