Kingston First at twenty: two ballots, a year of accounts, and what members get back

Kingston First has run the business improvement district in Kingston town centre since 2005, and describes itself as "the UK's first Business Improvement District" (Kingston First). It is now in its fifth five-year term, which runs from 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2029 (2025 to 2026 annual report; renewal business plan).

Twenty years in, a business in the town centre can read a good deal about what it pays for. Most of it is in three documents, and the figures in them are easy to mix up, so each one below sits under its year.

Two ballots, five years apart

Search summaries often join the 2019 renewal to the 2024 one. These are the two results as Kingston First announced them: the 2019 result, published 28 June 2019, and the 2024 result, published 4 July 2024, with the term dates from the 2023 to 2024 annual report and the business plan.

Support went up on both counts, and fewer took part. Neither announcement says why. The balloted figure is not a count of members, either: each rateable property gets a vote, so a business with two units in the area gets two (business plan). Both results passed the two tests every BID ballot has to pass, a majority by number and by rateable value of those voting, which business improvement districts, explained goes through.

What the levy costs

The business plan's levy rules, for this term:

• 1.6% of rateable value, on the 2023 rating list, charged a year in advance from 1 January 2025.
• No exemptions and no refunds. Every business in the area on the non-domestic rating list pays. Vacant properties pay too, with no void period.
• It can rise by up to 0.05 percentage points a year, to 1.65% from 2026 and so on, if the board decides to.

On those rules, a shop with a rateable value of £20,000 pays £320 a year. That is our arithmetic on the published rate, not a figure Kingston First gives. Leatherhead's new BID works differently: it charges 2%, but only on premises rated at £8,000 or more (Leatherhead's new BID).

The first year, against the plan

The business plan forecast each calendar year of the term. The 2025 to 2026 annual report covers April 2025 to March 2026. The periods differ, so this is a rough comparison, not a like-for-like one.

Three things stand out, and all three are our reading of the plan and the annual report:

• The reserve is bigger than the plan assumed. The plan forecast £160,000 carried into 2025. The annual report shows £539,112 carried forward from 2024 to 2025, and £511,891 carried into 2026 to 2027, after a deficit of £27,221 that the report says was in line with plans. The report says the surplus is carried forward "for the projects and services detailed in the business plan". Neither document explains the gap between the two figures.
• "Better connected" spent well under half its line. That heading covers wayfinding and transport. The report says the council has committed to invest in wayfinding across the town, with the work to progress "this year".
• The next ballot is already budgeted. £10,000 went to "BID6 Renewal", the ballot for a sixth term.

A levy payer can ask about any of this. The full audited accounts go to the company's annual meeting each September, and the report says they are published on Kingston First's website.

What members can take back

Kingston First's own list of what the levy pays for, set against what business rates pay the council for, is a single page (Kingston First). The levy side is the Christmas lights, campaigns and trails, extra cleaning and planting, and the services below. The council side is day-to-day cleaning and bins, street lighting, car parks, licensing and roadworks.

The services are the part a small business decides whether to use. From the 2025 to 2026 report:

• Cheaper recycling. Members saved almost £115,000 in the year through Kingston First's partnership with First Mile.
• Free training. Almost 150 people from 60 businesses were trained, free to members and their staff.
• The InKingston app, new in the year, for visitors as well as people who work in the town: 9,000 signed up, with over 200 offers and discounts.
• Networking, and reports on footfall and spend in the town centre.

Every business in the area pays the levy whether it uses any of this or not. For a small one, the useful question is whether what it takes back is worth more than what it pays.

This is where the evidence runs thin. Kingston First measures what it does and how members rate it: in its renewal plan, over 80% of members said it is "a credible and trustworthy organisation". It does not measure what it does for any one business's takings, and we found no independent study that does.

Kingston is a mile along the river from Surbiton, and a very different town to trade in; we wrote about trading a mile from Kingston. Epsom's BID, Go Epsom, is further into its term; see what it pays for. Kingston is also covered by our page for Epsom and Ewell businesses.