THE team behind Tavistock Business Improvement District (BID) have been consulting with town business owners to find out what they want the initiative to achieve, should it go ahead for another five years.

The BID team has held brainstorming sessions with business owners to generate ideas ahead of a vote in June on whether they want another five years of BID.

Ideas to come out of the sessions include extending the £2 all day parking in town to other car parks; improved signage for the town’s car parks; an emphasis on late-night shopping in marketing for Dickensian Evening; having a vote on moving Dickensian Evening back to December; improving or moving the tourist information centre; ensuring the future of the town’s Christmas lights display; a public screen in the square; overnight motor home parking and more regular updates to the BID website.

Business owners also raised issues over communication from the BID team throughout the five years of the scheme so far.

BID manager Lisa Piper said: ‘We are looking at what we have done in the first five years and building on that. We have done well with issues like parking.

‘We lobbied for the £2 parking and the council made the decision to do it. ‘Lobbying on other issues is something we can do. If we can do something like getting Tavistock coach friendly status that would be like a stamp of approval from the UK International Coach Federation. That would help bring more tourists in.‘

Tony Whitehead, chairman of Tavistock BID, added: ‘We had resounding support last year and over the last four years. We have done a good job of putting our business plan into action and if we can find out what town businesses want, we can put together a new more flexible business plan that could hopefully achieve things that many town business owners want.’

Tavistock BID is planning to hold a meeting in the coming days to look at the ideas brought forward and how they could be put together into a business plan for the next five years.