In concept, a Business Improve­ment District is brilliant, a coming together of the skills, effort and finance, the town’s businesses have to offer, to improve the town for the business community to flourish and for the residents and visitors to indirectly benefit too.

In execution, the BID in Dartmouth has never succeeded in this way and will now never develop as it should have done. Were this BID to now continue in any format it will be dogged by the failings, the errors and the omissions of the past two years.

The underlying fault with the Dartmouth BID project was that it was driven by an enthusiasm for the money it would bring rather than project led, looking for funds to facilitate defined works.

Even the geographic area was viewed for the business revenue it would realise rather than the benefit that could be expected by those businesses being asked to finance it.

The ambition of the BID advocates was to seek the ‘Yes’ voter, rather than just ‘the voters’. This was why the BID was seen from the start, by many, as undemocratic with many levy payers unaware, sidelined or largely ignored.

At its inception, the BID team had no performance history to allow us to judge their ability to implement the project.

Now, after two years, we have their performance history and it is evident that the ability to create the anticipated improvements are lacking to such an extent that the alleged spend capacity of £206,350 per annum has not been achieved, and what has been spent has largely been lost on vague marketing projects, confusing branding and website creations that have achieved little beyond damaging existing Dartmouth marketing efforts.

Many good people have put in a great deal of time and effort as BID directors and chairmen, only to find they are severely restricted in their ability to deliver feasible projects, not least because the business plan is flawed and largely unworkable and the implementation is not what the businesses had expected or desired.

It is all well and good to make claims that the majority of levy payers wished for marketing of Dartmouth but this assumes two things:

Firstly that you really are engaging with the majority of the levy payers and secondly that those replying agree with the definition of what exactly ’marketing’ is. Marketing, advertising and promotion are three very different beasts but one man’s interpretation can and has resulted in expenditure in very different directions.

Improving the product, ie Dartmouth, has always been of far greater importance than marketing. With the right product, your visitor will always be your most effective marketing tool.

The only way forward is to advocate a complete cessation of this BID in order to terminate the continued failings and lack of support that this current attempt has revealed.

Were the town’s businesses ever to propose a new BID, this could only ever come to fruition if all those instrumental in the first attempt were to step aside from any involvement whatsoever. This would avoid any repetition of the disappointment and lack of trust that is now so evident.

To suggest at the outset that the BID concept would take two years to gain the full participation and support of the business community, prior to the business plan being put to the vote, is proving to be an accurate assumption.

Rushing into a BID only ensures that mistakes are made and levy payers do not feel sufficiently involved and disillusionment sets in.

Regardless of any legal position the BID may find itself in, it is morally indefensible for anyone to seek to continue this BID if the clear majority of those levy payers vote to reject it. Do not forget that anyone then seeking to force a continuance of the BID must bear some responsibility for the enforcement that may result with non-payment penalties being imposed on levy payers.

Businessman Joe Murtagh