Putney town centre would get £2.5m over five years to make it cleaner and safer, under a plan unveiled by its business group on Wednesday evening. The cost will be covered by business in the High Street area, including Lower and Upper Richmond Roads.
Positively Putney is the town centre’s business improvement district (BID), funded by a compulsory levy on business premises. In the year to March it raised £341,253 from around 400 businesses. Its new plan would raise £495,000 a year from 470.
The levy would go up from 1.25% to 1.5% of a property’s rateable value, and the area would grow to take in about 70 more businesses. On a property with a rateable value of £50,000, the yearly bill would rise from £625 to £750. The decision is subject to a vote of those businesses in the catchment area.
Most of the extra money would go on the street. Streetscene, which covers pressure-washing, planting and festive lights, gets the largest share: £118,000 a year, or 23%. Security gets a budget line of its own, at £115,000 a year, or 22%. In the current plan, which businesses backed in 2021, security sat inside an “Enhancing Putney” budget of £88,750 a year alongside the cleaning and greening.
Put together, cleaning and security would take 45% of spending, up from 25% in that plan. In practice the shift has already begun: in the year to March, the organisation spent £141,365 on that work, 40% of its total.
Marketing and events would get £103,500 a year (20%), down from £123,350 (35%). Business support would rise to £94,000 (18%), from £78,100 (22%). The rest pays for running the organisation, collecting the levy and a contingency fund.
The plan promises a mix of uniformed and undercover security officers. Positively Putney has used undercover security since 2023 to tackle shoplifting, and 64% of businesses in its consultation wanted a greater uniformed presence. But only half backed its plan to seek accreditation as a Business Crime Reduction Partnership, which would formalise how businesses and partner agencies share intelligence.
The plan also adds the Embankment and riverside, which the current plan does not mention, promising to work with partners to “unlock” their potential. Positively Putney has also changed its logo.
How the vote works
Businesses now vote on the plan by post. Positively Putney says ballot papers will go out on 8 October and must be back by 5pm on 5 November, with the result announced the next day. Wandsworth Council manages the ballot.
Two tests apply: a simple majority of those who vote must vote yes, and the yes votes must add up to more rateable value than the no votes. A business gets one vote for each eligible property.
Businesses created Positively Putney in a ballot in December 2016, when 103 of the 137 valid votes were in favour. They renewed it in November 2021 by 172 votes to 30. The vote is expected to follow a similar pattern this year but if for any reason it fails, the organisation would close on 31 March 2027 and everything it pays for stops.
This ballot runs under rules set in 2004. In June the government promised to modernise them, with simpler voting and a say for property owners.
The plan lands on a High Street where squatters occupied empty shops and pubs for four months last year, and the BID played a crucial role in organising the response. Its bigger area also takes in businesses already under strain.
The streets being added include Winthorpe Road. Under the District line arches there, Physical Culture, the 98-year-old gym, is fighting rent rises from Places for London, the property company of Transport for London, which has been raising rents across its arches. Arch businesses on the street with a rateable value of £12,000 or more would pay the town centre levy on top.
You can read more on the plan at https://bid3.positivelyputney.co.uk/.
