These districts typically fund services which are defined by the industry collecting the assessment, and may include work perceived by some businesses as being inadequately performed by government with its existing tax revenues, such as cleaning streets, providing security, making capital improvements, construction of pedestrian and streetscape enhancements, and marketing the area.
[3] Other countries with BIDs include Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Jamaica, Serbia, Albania, Germany, Ireland, Singapore, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
Prior to this occurring, state legislatures need to grant local units the authority to create BIDs.
[5] If voted in by local businesses, the BID levy is an extension to existing non-domestic business-rates.
In Scotland for a ballot to be successful it must meet four criteria, a minimum turnout of 25% by the number of eligible persons (the headcount) and by rateable value and a majority of those that vote by number of ballots and by rateable value must vote in favour.
[8] BIDs exist in almost every one of the top 50 largest cities in the United States, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC.
Minneapolis and Boston have been the last of the top 20 largest regions to adopt a business improvement district.
BIDs can also lobby different levels of government for significant changes to their area if they feel it is necessary to improve business.
As one of the largest BIDs in Europe, New West End Company brings together the commercial interests of over 600 retailers, property owners and West End businesses working closely with the Mayor of London, Transport for London, Westminster City Council, the Metropolitan Police and local neighbours.
(Scotland) Act 2006) is different from the England and Wales legislation in that it allows property owners as well as occupiers to be included in a BID.
There are also differences in the timescales, ballot and reballot criteria, and the legislative requirements of the BID proposer.
In 2016 the world's first food and drink BID was delivered in East Lothian[29] with the levy based on the number of full-time employees, also a first.
Six of the sixteen German Bundeslander (Federal States) introduced the requisite legal framework to create BIDs: Hamburg, Bremen, Hessen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland and Schleswig-Holstein.
BIDs have been accused of being unaccountable[30] and by their very nature undemocratic, concentrating power in a geographic area into the hands of the few.
[33] BIDs have also been criticized in the past by anti-poverty groups for being too harsh on the homeless and poor who may congregate around businesses.
[35] President of Civic Voice, Griff Rhys Jones criticised the creation of a BID in central London neighbourhood saying that is undemocratic: "Neither the people who live there, nor the many intriguing small shops and businesses, have been allowed to vote or have even been consulted.".