COVID-19: BID Operations Statement
To our Team London Bridge BID members,
We hope you, your loved ones and your colleagues are safe in these difficult times.
Currently, Team London Bridge continues to provide the majority of our services and are looking at appropriate ways to ensure our offer during this period of crisis. The Team are all available remotely and will remain in touch.
A few services paid for by your BID levy to highlight at this time, include:
BID Funded police officers
Our BID funded Police Officers, PC Nick Morant and PC Lee Noble, will be policing the area as usual. If you are temporarily closing your premises please ensure basic measures such as working CCTV and alarm systems are in place, and do not leave valuable equipment/products in view. For further advice visit the Met Police website.
LOCAL CHARITY FUNDING
As ever, we are committed to funding local charities and have signed up to the national ‘We stand with the Sector’ accord to emphasise our support through these critical times, joining an alliance of funders from across sector
COMMUNICATIONS
There are some fantastic innovations coming from our businesses as they try to adapt to this temporary environment. We are posting updates from businesses on the teamlondonbridge.co.uk homepage and sharing posts on social media; twitter and Instagram. Please do take a look and support them as they reinvent their offering to fit in with our much-changed lifestyles.
If you have already identified ways in which you feel Team London Bridge can help you through the coming weeks, please let us know. These are unchartered waters and we need to find the most appropriate ways to support our BID member businesses.
Sadly, Team London Bridge has cancelled all our events in March, April and May. We hope to bring those working from home a flavour of normality with online activities over the coming weeks. We will keep you updated.
For up-to-date health advice and updates on help for businesses go to:
We will strive to get all our services back to normal at the earliest, safe opportunity and return to enjoying working in the London Bridge area in the near future. Please do continue to visit www.teamlondonbridge.co.uk where will publish updates when appropriate.
Best wishes,
Nadia Broccardo - Chief Executive
UPDATE 22.04.2020
We are now firmly in our second month of this shift in the way we live our lives. You might be at home, either working or furloughed, maybe you’re providing key services or are temporarily closed, or perhaps running your business with a new way of doing things – whatever your status Team London Bridge is here to support you and your business.
We are working hard to coordinate the response from the business sector, communicate your innovations, stimulate and action ideas, reassure by providing security and collect data on which we will help base recovery plans.
The BID Foundation and Institute of Place Management have identified four recovery stages for businesses, and we have adapted these to best suit the London Bridge community.
Team London Bridge 4 Stage Recovery Plan
We’ve modified our core services to help our community fight back from the current crisis period. Here’s a round-up of current Team London Bridge services:
Security and Safety
Our three BID funded Police Officers continue to keep London Bridge safe. In addition to helping deliver food donations to key workers when needed, they have been providing additional patrols around the hospitals to reassure commuting healthcare staff and continue to arrest and charge suspects for burglary and theft.
Our Business and Operations Manager Henry has increased his voluntary hours as a Metropolitan Police Special Constable to help patrol the London Bridge area.
Championing Business
Team London Bridge is using its connections and network of business groups, governmental bodies and BIDs across the UK to help shape and coordinate business support and response to the current crisis. You may have seen regular updates from Team London Bridge Chief Executive, Nadia Broccardo, and on our business information and advice section, ensuring our businesses have access to relevant and essential support. We continue to lobby on behalf of all business sectors within our BID and are collecting data and selectively asking our businesses to take part in surveys that will help shape essential recovery strategies.
Marketing and Promotions
Our businesses continue to innovate and inspire us as they navigate this strange but temporary environment. We are posting updates from businesses on the Team London Bridge Community Noticeboard and have created a new area of the website to showcase virtual offerings. We're also sharing posts on social media; Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Please do take a look and support them as they reinvent their offering to fit in with our much-changed lifestyles.
Team London Bridge new ‘Love London Bridge’ virtual content hub
Environment
Our significantly reduced one-man crew is adhering to social distancing guidelines and carrying out maintenance of our valued public green spaces such as Gibbon’s Rent, Greenwood Theatre Pocket Park and Queen Elizabeth Gardens. This will ensure planting survives the recent period of dry weather and our green spaces are looking their best to provide us all with much needed calming places to spend time in when businesses return in the coming weeks and months.
Culture and Events
Our virtual Love lunch sessions have been supporting employees working from home and showcasing London Bridge’s incredibly rich cultural offer via our digital communication channels. Wellness classes, yoga sessions, storytelling, history talks, and live music are just a few of the well-attended online events we’ve brought together, with Tower Bridge and Florence Nightingale Museum sessions proving particularly popular. The next few weeks will see more activities, including Poetry Takeaway and Musicity artists, as well as exclusive content from some of our favourite local cultural attractions. Looking ahead, we are working with external producers and partners across the arts to scope future and alternative projects.
Artist Gail Seres Woolfson hosts a Love Lunch session
Responsible Business
Following 15 years of successfully funding and developing relationships between local businesses and charities we have been able to make much needed early connections to relieve pressure caused by the current crisis , reaching out to charities based in London Bridge to involve them in the 2.6 Challenge and asking what sort of help they need. Read more about the project here .
Placeshaping
Regeneration and development continues, despite the all-encompassing public health crisis. Our Placeshaping Director has been studiously keeping abreast of plans as they change, liaising with developers and planners, and ensuring that decisions made in this period don’t divert from the vision of the London Bridge Plan and sustainably support the interests of our business community.
BID Ballot Update
Due to the uncertainty of the year ahead we are seeking to delay the planned October 2020 Business Improvement District (BID) ballot to allow more time for the London Bridge BID community to compile a five-year plan that can best benefit local businesses. We will let you know when we have more news.