Businesses in Coventry, us included, received an unwelcome surprise in January this year. Out of the blue an 'Invoice' from Coventry Council's Business Rates Department for yet more money. With a "warning" on the back, in the confrontational, threatening terms characteristic of 'modern' local government.

The sum concerned is 159 days worth of an expected annual payment to fund a private company "Coventry Best for Business", I will refer to them as "CB4B" from here on. Despite their rather childish name, this company claims to be just what we all need. A means of promoting business in Coventry and improving the city's image.

They intend to do this by providing us with security cameras plus broadband and driving around in yellow cars. That is the gist of the company flyer included with the demand.

The problem is that most of us did not ask this company to muscle in on our territory and provide us with "protection". Many of us have already installed cameras, those that need it already have broadband. CB4B's "offering" is not up to current industry standards and currently does not exist.

Many, probably most, companies were not meaningfully consulted by "CB4B", we certainly did not vote for them. Despite government rules concerning Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), no real ballot was carried out.

The rules are that to start a 'BID', over 50% by number and over 50% by rateable value of businesses must be in favour. According to the Council's own figures, 33.6% of businesses voted and 54% of those were in favour.

That is under 18% of businesses in favour of a 'BID', a long way short of a majority. There is no evidence that those businesses were consulted and informed of costs involved before being asked to decide. In reality the real percentage of Coventry businesses in favour is less than 6%. Almost two thirds of Coventry businesses were not included in the so-called ballot. So the Council & CB4B are presumably not aware of their existence or consider them irrelevant.

If you are affected by this issue, please let me know by E-Mail. I can then let everyone know of developments and help co-ordinate a response. There are a number of possible legal remedies that can be explored.

Our E-Mail address is: info@alphaentek.com.

It is also worth contacting your M.P., Robert Ainsworth, Geoffrey Robinson or Jim Cunningham. They are here to represent us and agree that the Council has behaved badly on this issue. More letters or E-Mails to them will strengthen their hand. Mr. Robinson has raised the matter at length, in Parliament and on TV.

Regards, Ron Lebar. Alpha Entek.

P.S. Some businesses are tackling this problem in their own way. At least one, probably more, has taken Legal Counsel's advice on this matter. I am NOT trying to take credit for their work and expenditure.

My intention is to help everyone, including us, by encouraging all concerned to get together and combat this problem. Also by providing this Web page as a means to an end. Fragmented effort is never as good as a co-ordinated approach. If somone else has found a better way, then I am all for it, please let everyone, including me, know.

The best way our City Council can help businesses and tempt more to come here is to reduce the Business rate. Not demand a substantial increase in costs. We get little for the money demanded as it is. Those of us on private industrial estates or business parks get even less. At least two local companies have been forced to close by the BID charge.

The Council does not collect our rubbish, unless we pay them to do so. They do not provide business waste recycling facilities. Private contractors provide far better service and value.

They do not clean our private streets, quite the opposite. Rubbish from the infrequently swept public streets blows in, messing up our estates.

Police, paid for out of the rates, do not patrol business estates, they are not keen to even respond to alarms. Making the conditions for them doing so ever more onerous and impractical.

The Fire Brigade is possibly the only genuinely essential service paid for out of non-residential rates.

Who benefits from a City wide 'BID'? The Council obviously do, it gives them the right to grab nore money from us and more power over us, more chances to use their hired thugs, sorry bailiffs. CB4B are of course the main beneficiary, they will have millions of our money to play with, to buy yellow cars to run around in. Coventry & Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce (CWCC), the co-instigators of this nonsense, are another beneficiary of the 'BID'. So of course they are all for it.

I do not think this issue is worth putting anyone else's livelihood at risk for. Simply refusing to pay will not make the issue go away, it needs to be fought, using every legal tactic available to us. It is not fanciful, in my opinion, to include European Human Rights legislation in our armoury, we too have rights.

I am not entirely against the idea, in principle, of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs). It is an idea, imported from America, that has apparently worked elsewhere.

What I, and probably most others are against is the way this particular BID has been foisted on us. Without genuine consultation, without any prior notice of costs involved and without taking our views into consideration. Without asking us if we want it and are willing to pay for it.

If such a scheme is to be accepted it must fulfill the 'job description' and formula set out by government. This one does not fit the criteria, in my opinion CB4B does not inspire confidence. They should put their house in order and go back to the 'drawing board'.

Society has always been replete with opportunists looking for a gravy train to board. To avoid me holding that opinion of them, CB4B need to convince me, and everyone else, that they really do want to consult with us. Not just send out slick advertising that will go straight into the nearest bin.

Finally (for the moment): If despite this experience, a BID is finally agreed by a genuine majority, bills should be courteous & directly from the company concerned. Not from the innately nasty Rates Department, with their excessive undemocratic power and crude bully boy tactics.

The issue of whether council bailiffs should continue to exist, in this 'enlightened' century, is an issue to be resolved in another place, at another time.

More soon...

Another point that has not been raised eleswhere: The Government has, for some time, allowed or encouraged local authorities to intercept private and business E-Mails. One reason given is that old favourite of the surveillance society, "National Security". ISPs put commercial and customer's interests first. So they do not usually co-operate with such interception unless obliged to by a court order.

Such court orders are frequently applied for and often granted. A Web search will uncover some of the councils involved. The motive may be to allegedly combat rates fraud, find fly-tippers and other perceived "transgressions". Such authorities set themselves up as judge and jury. An insidious errosion of civil rights, by non-elected petty officials with their own agenda, at public expense. News Link

Remember; Some time ago, use of satellite images was proposed, for councils to look into gardens. To see if any "unauthorised" sheds, solariums, conservatories, extensions etc. had been built. Big Brother is with us and gaining strength every day. So after building an extension etc., paint its roof with camouflage colours. News Link

It is obvious why the City Council wish to supply broadband to businesses, in reality simply a wireless link to their corporate optical fibre Wide Area Network (WAN). This network is under construction & is not due to be finished until 2009. It will cost at least 10 million pounds, paid for by Business Rates payers, Council Tax payers and BID levy victims.

The corporate WAN will connect Coucil buildings, schools & surveilance camers across the City. They will be able to read all E-Mails, passing through their Web server, without a court order. Thus dramatically lowering the bar on individual security and privacy. One may think, given the quantity of mail concerned, that sufficient manpower will not be available, not a problem.

Readily available software, courtesy of the surveillance industry, can indiscriminately traul through vast numbers of messages quickly. Searching for chosen key words or phrases, down-loading the message whenever a match is found. The best of such software is expensive, but councils have millions of pounds of ratepayers money to spend. Much business communication is sensitive, security is essential to competitiveness, profitability and survival. (Echelon link)

Coventry M.P. Geoffrey Robinson has organised a petition against the B.I.D. Please sign this petition and return to Mr. Robinson. If possible please pass copies on to any other bussiness affected by this matter.

If you contact me, I will E-Mail you a copy, for signing and for copying to others. Mr. Robinson's office will do likewise.

My E-Mail address is: info@alphaentek.com

Regards, Ron Lebar. Alpha Entek.

We are taking various steps to facilitate a resolution of this problem. Helping to spread the word of Geoffrey Robinson's petition and this Web page are a couple. On behalf of our estate, we have also claimed a refund of the first instalment of the BID levy, which covers the period from 25-10-2007 to 31-3-2008.

I suggest all businesses, who are unhappy with the way this levy has been imposed, consider making a similar claim. Regardless of whether payment, under duress, has been made or not. a suggested guide wording is in the next panel below, you may have a better idea. The grounds for our claim are that we have been charged for services that have not been provided.

A copy has also been sent to 'Coventry Best for Business'.

Regards, Ron Lebar. Alpha Entek.

To:
Finance and Legal Services
Local Taxation Division
Council House
Coventry. CV1 5RR

We the listed member businesses of the Estate Business Association hereby claim a refund of the Business Improvement District Rates levy for the period from 25-10-2007 to 31-03-2008 (159 days).

The claimed refund for each business is calculated as follows:
(£200.00 plus 1.5 percent of Rateable Value) X 159/366.

The grounds for this claim are as follows:

That the services invoiced for have not been provided for the period concerned, specifically:

(1) Surveilance cameras have not been installed and no survey has been carried out regarding such provision.

(2) Broadband has not been made available and in fact the specified broadband service does not currently exist.

(3) Routine patrols of the estate by CB4B vehicles have not been carried out. Security tapes from the Estate's private surveilance camera system show no evidence that such vehicles came to the estate during the period.

(4) No other services have been proffered or supplied.

Please refund the claimed amounts to the relevant Business rates accounts, forthwith.

Signed: ...

Copy to Coventry Best for Business.

CB4B May newsletter: The Board of Directors decided to delay issuing levy invoices for the 2008 – 2009 financial year, because 'not all the services' were in place.

This delay was initially for 3 months until July. The said 'services' are still not in place and the invoices have not yet been issued.

So why were the disputed January invoice issued, as the 'services' were most definitely not in place then?

Assuming it was to raise money to tide them over until they got going, as stated in Court, by the Council's Solicitor. The 2004 Regulations specifically state that the Council must satisfy themselves that the company chosen has the necessary financial resources, to provide the services claimed for the BID.

The Council is custodian of public money and responsible for ensuring its safety. No company can justify charging its potential customers, willing or otherwise, for a product it has not yet produced and does not have the resouces to produce. It is their responsibilty alone to have or obtain the required funding to set up their business.

In the same newsletter and other documents CB4B state that the Council's optical WAN (Wide Area Network) is a joint venture. Part funded by the BID company. The WAN is a Council project, connecting their various premises , offices, schools, libraries etc.

It does not have anything to do with businesses, apart from those contracted to do the work. This use of BID money, to subsidise the Council's project, is mis-appropriation of public funds. Using money taken from one third of Coventry's businesses to bolster the general Council Tax fund.

The proposed, currently non-existant, broadband is merely a radio (wireless) link into the proposed WAN

Similar mis-appropriation occurred with the Godiva Festival. Using some £150,000 from the BID fund to help pay for established entertainment that has nothing to do with business or its promotion.

Cameras: The BID surveilance camera system can not be commisioned until the wireless broadband is in place. This in turn can not be implemented until the Council's WAN is completed. According to Council literature, this is schduled for 2009. So the cameras can not come before next year.

Broadband: The proposed "free" wireless broadband is specified as being "wires only", no security will be provided. A radio link is by nature, open to all, if security codes are not included. So anyone with a portable computer, perhaps in a parked car, will be able to intercept business communications.

It may be claimed that businesses can protect themselves by using encryption.

Encryption only works if the sender and receiver are on the same network, using the same encoding software and key. This is obviously not the case with a public broadband system.

It is not practical for every business to ensure that every-one they send E-Mails to has the same encryption software and key that they are using. We live in the real world, not the fictional one of James Bond.

In addition, the proposed broadband will be connected to the Council's LAN. So Coucil officers will be able to intercept business communications. Our government is on record as being strongly in favour of this, for "national security" reasons.

Most councils resort to court orders to gain access to private or business E-Mails. This Council will not need court orders. Most coucil interceptions are not conducted for 'national security' reasons. It is simple spying, to catch fly-tippers and combat perceived rates fraud etc.

A Free Ride: In the explanatory literature for the BID the principle of 'fairness' is covered. No business, within the geographic area of a BID, should benefit from the advantages of the BID, without paying for those advantages. Succinctly put as 'no-one should get a free ride at others expense'.

So all must pay for the BID, whether they voted for or against it. The democratic principle of fairness, the rule of majority.

Very high minded, but: The companies chosen to be in the BID are not in a defined geographic area. They are in 80 or so business estates scattered around Coventry. The total of businesses in the 'geographic area' we call Coventry totals some 7,900.

Assume, by some miracle, Coventry does become "the place to do business" as mentioned in the BID's literature. All of these businesses will benefit from any improvement in trade and the business environment.

But only 2,500, mostly smal, businesses will be paying for it. The majority will be getting a "free ride", paid for by those least able to shoulder the burden.

Is this the democratic principle at work?

During the Roman Catholic Inquisition, the terms of reference for a 'Religious Court' hearing were strangely familiar.

When a poor unfortunate was denounced, usually out of jealous spite, the die was cast. They were brought before the Court, to confess their guilt. They would be told, "you can not have defence witnesses and you can not defend yourself. You are guilty and we are here only to pronounce judgement".

"If you confess, we will be merciful and will kill you quickly. If you refuse you will be tortured until you do confess. Then you will be killed, painfully."

At a liability hearing, the victim is told "we are not here to decide if you are guilty of non payment" you are guilty or you would not be here. We are only here to confirm a Liability Order. If you pay now, bailiffs will not be sent, otherwise they will."

Magistrates Courts wer established in the days of robber barons, the people who became the Aristocracy, to give these powerful men an air of legitimacy. In situations like this they betray those origins, Councils and QUANGOs have replaced the old robber barons.

Magistrates are chosen from the ranks of ordinary people, are often well meaning, usually voluntary and generally do a good job. They may even have sympathy with the victims, as it seemed in our case. However they are, as in days of old, subservient to their masters and must toe the line. If they just once dispenced real justice, setting a precedent, the floodgates would be opened. The Council would have to give all BID estate businesses their money back., bringing the gravy train to a grinding halt

The only way out now is to refer this to a higher Court, as the lead Magistrate hinted during his summation. This avenue will be explored shortly, like you all, we have to fit in with earning a living. It is heartbreaking to be forced to give hard earned income to legalised scroungers, who have given nothing useful in return.

Ron Lebar.

Compiled by Ron Lebar.

A "ballot" is held, on a scheme to make money at people's expense, without allowing most of those eligible to take part.

The result is "published" by putting up notices, only in the ballot holder's own property.

After an appeal against the result, a "public enquiry" is held, without inviting the public concerned to take part. The appeal is rejected.

When people object, payment is enforced, through a low level court, allowing no effective means of defence.

Victims are threatened, "pay up or get a visit from our hired private enforcers, who will steal your property".

Sounds like a certain southern part of Africa or a Third World 'banana republic'.

Welcome to 21st Century Britain !!

Ron Lebar.

We have heard frequently that the City Centre BID was an unqualified success and fully supported. We were told that the City Council and CV One (the company behind both BIDs) knew better than us just how good a BID is. At least fas far as the retail sector is concerned. This seemed to be re-inforced by the centre BID being voted in, for a second five year term, by an "overwhelming majority".

Now the Coventry Telegraph has uncovered some of the truth. Only 254 votes were cast, out of 672 potential voters, 224 were in favour. Many of the rest now face visits from bailiffs, hardly an overwhelming success story. More a case of big stores, who can afford the BID levy, agreeing to the bullying of smaller rivals.

So the City Centre BID is fragmented, with those not in favour threatened, with theft of property by bailiffs and closure actions.

This is how the City Council "promotes" business in Coventry !!

Ron Lebar.

To advertise here contact Alpha Entek

E-Mail: info@alphaentek.com