CITY

PRIDE

Sunderland’s city centre is going through significant transformative change. The BID has an essential role in ensuring that all those who live, work and visit Sunderland benefit from the ongoing investment in the public realm.

We have proven that colour and culture contribute to quality places and spaces; we are supporting and driving activities that contribute to a well-presented and clean environment by bringing permanent and temporary additions to critical sites for everyone to enjoy.

This includes everything from maintaining existing planters and introducing new floral arrangements to giving city centre walls and empty units a new lease of life via our Future Walls project.

A clean environment is critical to a city’s customer experience, appeal and economic success.

Our SR1 Street Ranger is a much-appreciated resource across the city centre. As it is a valuable and essential service for most businesses in the BID area, we are covering more ground and providing more services by investing in our equipment and resources.

Our SR1 Street Ranger has built a close working relationship with the city’s street cleansing teams, enabling us to act quickly and without fuss, suggest improvements, and escalate enforcement when needed. Our SR1 Street Ranger is also a welcoming face on the city’s streets, pivotal to knowledge sharing and communication, acting as the eyes and ears for the business community.

A robust approach to crime reduction is essential to supporting, retaining and attracting businesses to the city centre.

We are proud of what we have already achieved and continue to investigate, respond to and resolve issues relating to safety improvements.

Operations Manager, Kirsty, works collaboratively with all Police and Local Authority initiatives, such as SAIL, and continues to jointly run schemes, such as Shopwatch and City Watch and contribute to Pubwatch to support businesses and reduce antisocial behaviour.

She also oversees the Radio scheme and the Schemelink applications, providing users with real-time updates and information 24/7.

We promote training and nationwide courses, including ACT (Anti-terrorism), so that Sunderland businesses have the most up-todate knowledge to combat crime and antisocial behaviour.

We a bringing individuals, businesses, and sectors together to spearhead the forces and resources needed to help address issues and improve the evening and night-time economy outcomes.

We are therefore keenly working towards achieving Purple Flag status for Sunderland city centre alongside Northumbria Police and other partners.

This international accreditation scheme is a “gold standard” for safe, vibrant, appealing city centres. It will be the icing on the cake in demonstrating that Sunderland can provide a rich and diverse mix of dining, entertainment and cultural activities while promoting the safety and well-being of visitors and residents.

The BID fully supports Sunderland’s ambition to be carbon neutral by the end of 2040.

We are working with Sunderland City Council and its partners to ensure that their pioneering action towards a low-carbon, sustainable future is embraced within BID businesses.

At the same time, we are doing our bit to reduce our carbon footprint by focusing on how we can be more sustainable in all our actions and activities and transfer any knowledge we gain to our businesses to help support the city’s goal.