Norwich BID Term 2
BID Term 2 ran from 2017 to 2022, building on the foundations established during Norwich BID’s first five-year term. The programme represented almost £5 million of investment in the city, with a wider BID area and a focus on promoting Norwich, improving the city centre experience and giving businesses a stronger collective voice.
During the term, Norwich BID delivered a wide range of projects across marketing, events, public realm, business support, safety and sustainability. The BID also secured significant additional funding for projects across the city, supported businesses through the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and worked with partners to help secure Norwich’s £26 million Town Deal.
Read our Norwich BID 2022-27 Business Plan which looks back on the achievements made in BID Term 2…
Experience Norwich
First impressions matter. Our Norwich City Hosts provide practical support, local knowledge and a friendly face for tens of thousands of visitors every year. Their role extends far beyond providing directions; they help shape perceptions of Norwich as a welcoming, confident and visitor-friendly city.
A vibrant city centre depends on reasons to visit beyond shopping alone. Norwich Summer Sessions transforms public spaces with free live music and street performance, creating moments of discovery that encourage thousands of people to spend longer in the city and support local businesses. By animating the streets, we help create the atmosphere that makes Norwich feel alive.
Our city trails turn Norwich into a giant interactive adventure. Designed to encourage exploration, they guide families through different parts of the city centre, helping participants discover attractions and hidden gems while creating memorable experiences that strengthen connections with the city.
A successful city centre must also be a safe one. Our Gold Standard, nationally accredited, ALERT scheme gives over 150 businesses access to real-time intelligence, helping them respond more effectively to crime and anti-social behaviour. Combined with partnership working and our annual Business Crime Conference, it forms a vital part of Norwich’s collective resilience.
For many people, the festive lights are the moment that Christmas begins. Norwich BID’s investment ensures that the city-wide lighting scheme can continue each year, creating an important sense of occasion, pride and anticipation while supporting the critical trading period that many businesses depend upon.
Our urban art project enlivens vacant and tired spaces around the city centre with large eye catching murals to the theme of ‘City of Stories’. These large-scale and creative pieces of work deliver a new dimension to the city centre experience and build on Norwich’s status as England’s first UNESCO City of Literature.
Love Light Norwich brought unexpected magic to the Norwich streets: stunning installations, performance, projections, a city centre procession, and much more for everyone to experience, all for FREE! The festival created a stunning immersive experience in the city centre, featuring an illuminating trail of light and fire artworks, extraordinary installations and astounding performances. In 2020, more than 15,000 people from across the region joined our debut festival, admiring the art, participating in the installations, watching the parade, and making the most of what Norwich has to offer, from the late-night market to the food trail throughout the city. Not only did the festival bring accessible, high-quality art to the city, but it also increased footfall in the off-season, driving traffic to our local businesses. Love Light Norwich 2022 was supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, with funding from the EXPERIENCE project co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the Interreg France (Channel) England Programme led by Norfolk County Council, and with support from Norwich City Council.
Norwich BID organises wayfinding signage and banners across the city centre to help people navigate Norwich and create a consistent, welcoming identity for the city. The signage provides useful directional information, while banners contribute to Norwich’s visual identity and help reinforce the city’s ‘City of Stories’ branding.
Norwich BID provided free Wi-Fi across the city centre, available to visitors, residents and workers within the BID area. The service provided convenient access to the internet while spending time in the city centre.
Norwich has been recognised for having a safe, fun and well-managed city centre at night. In 2017, it was awarded Purple Flag status, a national award that shows the city offers a great experience after dark. NBID works closely with Norwich City Council, the police and Evening and Night Time Economy (ENTE) to promote a safe and welcoming experience after dark.
VisitNorwich
During BID Term 2, VisitNorwich strengthened Norwich’s profile as a visitor destination through proactive PR, media relations and destination marketing. The launch of the ‘Norwich, the City of Stories’ brand in 2019 provided a distinctive platform for promoting the city’s attractions, culture, businesses and experiences, helping to reach audiences beyond Norfolk and support the wider visitor economy.
During BID Term 2, VisitNorwich delivered campaigns to raise awareness of Norwich as a visitor destination and challenge perceptions of the city. The launch of the ‘Norwich, the City of Stories’ brand in 2019 provided a distinctive new platform for destination marketing, with creative campaigns and content showcasing Norwich’s unique character, culture, heritage and visitor experiences.
During BID Term 2, VisitNorwich developed its digital presence to promote Norwich as a visitor destination throughout the year. The VisitNorwich website provided information and inspiration for visitors, while social media channels helped showcase the city’s businesses, attractions, events and experiences to growing audiences. By the end of the term, VisitNorwich social channels had reached more than 67,000 followers, while the website recorded an average of 65,000 pageviews in 2021.
Throughout BID Term 2, VisitNorwich continued to produce and distribute the Norwich City Map, providing visitors with a useful guide to the city centre and its businesses, attractions and key destinations. The map helped visitors navigate Norwich while promoting the breadth of the city’s offer and encouraging exploration beyond the main visitor hotspots.
Invest Norwich
Onwards Norfolk was an award-winning, post-Covid-19 recovery programme delivered by in partnership with Great Yarmouth Town Centre Partnership, and King’s Lynn BID. Designed to restore confidence in our high streets and help businesses adapt for a stronger, more resilient future, the project brought together investment, innovation, and local expertise to support regeneration across Norfolk.
Led by Norwich BID, the partnership secured £500,000 from the UK Government’s Community Renewal Fund, matched with £92,000 from the three BIDs. Four interconnected workstreams delivered impact across the county, each responding to local needs and contributing to a more vibrant, future-ready Norfolk.
Work in Norwich (WiN) is Norwich’s official inward investment campaign, developed with funding from Norwich’s Town Deal, and supported by Norwich City Council. In 2021 Norwich BID was allocated £180k from Norwich’s £25m Town Deal fund, to deliver a branding project to: ‘establish a cohesive commercial proposition for Norwich as ‘the place’ for business and promote the city as one of the best places in the world to live, learn, work and succeed.’ Work in Norwich was officially launched in October 2022.
A collaboration between ConsensusPower and Norwich Business Improvement District (BID), the Norwich Solar System is an innovative project that transforms the economics of generating and consuming locally produced clean power across the city. This groundbreaking project will establish a local energy community for Norwich, in which low-cost, renewable energy is supplied to businesses from city centre rooftops and out-of-town generators.
Norwich Street Aid is a project created by Norwich BID in response to the business community’s concerns about the number of people rough sleeping on the city’s streets. Set up in partnership with Norfolk Community Foundation and Pathways (including St Martin’s Housing Trust and The Feed), Norwich Street Aid works collaboratively to raise and distribute funds. The project raises funds that could be applied for directly by keyworkers on behalf of those who needed it. These funds are used to help individuals acquire what they needed most, such as a mobile phone, clothing, household items, or support to reconnect with family members.
As part of a completed project, Norwich BID partnered with Rio to offer businesses in the area access to the Rio platform, helping them track their sustainability journey. During this initiative, Rio analysed business data and provided actionable ways to improve sustainability and reduce costs.
Norwich BID worked with Small & Medium Enterprises from across the city to build a circular economy in Norwich through the ‘Upcycle Your Waste’ initiative. This project aimed to take waste produced by local businesses and turn it into new resources. As an EU initiative, it was free to all participating businesses, offering them the opportunity to save money on waste costs and reduce the waste they sent to landfill.
Norwich BID works to bring additional investment into the city, helping to maximise the impact of the BID levy. Through identifying funding opportunities, developing partnerships and securing external investment, we support projects, initiatives and improvements that deliver additional value for Norwich and its businesses.
Strong economies are built on strong relationships. Through regular events and engagement programmes, we create opportunities for businesses to connect, collaborate and influence the future direction of the city. Just as importantly, these conversations ensure Norwich BID remains informed by the needs of the businesses that it represents.
