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11
Mar
The new chief executive looking to take Harrogate BID forward through the power of relationships
Jason Maxwell is only a week into his new role as chief executive of Harrogate Business Improvement District, but he is, he says, “absolutely loving it”.
He has taken over from ex-North Yorkshire Council tourism chief Gemma Rio, who took on the role on an interim basis following the sudden departure of Matthew Chapman last June.
Speaking to the Stray Ferret, Mr Maxwell said:
It’s a really exciting time. Harrogate is seen from the outside as a beautiful town, which it is, but in reality it does need a bit more investment and help.
I’m still very much learning people and places, but I can’t wait to get fully involved.
Originally from Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham, he has a background in retail and managing teams, and once worked for a marketing company with clients including Vodafone and Proctor & Gamble.
He had his own retail business for a while, which he cannily sold in anticipation of the economy getting worse.
In 2018, he helped set up the BID in Stockton and managed it for eight years, before putting in a shorter stint as economic growth officer at Hartlepool Borough Council.
Businesses vote whether to set up a BID. If they vote in favour, firms in a defined area pay an annual levy to pay for staff and schemes that increase footfall. Harrogate's BID is in its second five-year term.
Tackling run-down buildings
Mr Maxwell's time working for Fenwick’s department store in York means he knows Harrogate quite well, but there have still been some surprises.
He said:
It’s the hills. I always think it’s not that steep here, but it is!
I’ve also been surprised by how badly some of the buildings have aged. Quite a few of them that are privately owned have been left a bit run down. That’s a challenge for every town centre, and it’s one of the pieces of work I’d like to make a start on.
In Stockton, we plotted all the empty buildings and managed to get some of the landlords to do some work on them.
This will be music to many Harrogate residents’ ears, given the recent complaints about the state of some of the town centre’s buildings. But getting property owners to spend money can be notoriously difficult, so how did he swing it on Teesside?
He said:
Relationships. Sometimes a landlord might not even know where a building is. If you’ve got a run-down building that’s owned, say, by a Danish pension fund, it might only be one line out of 500 on a spreadsheet.
In other words, if you talk to landlords and let them know what the issues are, they can – apparently – be surprisingly receptive.
Jason Maxwell, chief executive of Harrogate BID.
Previous achievements
Getting things done by speaking to people appears to be Mr Maxwell’s forté, and it bore fruit in his previous role at Stockton BID, where he helped set up business network Stockton MET and Stockton Street Angels, a volunteer-led initiative to support the evening economy and improve town-centre safety.
He added:
I’m very proud of the dementia network we set up. It grew and grew and now there are 290 businesses in Stockton that are dementia-friendly.
We also helped quite a lot of businesses get through covid. The team got a lot of thanks for the hard work they put in to keep people informed and help businesses remain open.
Another initiative, Humans of the High Street, is an award-winning campaign that highlighted the personal stories of local traders, particularly during that pandemic.
Mr Maxwell said:
I’m passionate about place and small business, and about making places better where we can. A lot of that comes from relationship-building. That was our approach in Stockton and we had quite a lot of success with it.
Few hints so far
Harrogate BID’s stated aims are threefold: increasing footfall, maintaining a diverse offer in a high-quality environment, and combining the town’s heritage with technological innovations to remain ahead of the competition.
Mr Maxwell won’t be changing those, as they’re enshrined in the BID’s five-year plan, and what else he’ll be able to achieve with his communicative approach remains to be seen. Other than wanting to get those buildings spruced up, and adding some extra business support for members, he’s giving few hints so far. He said:
You’ll have to interview me in three or four months’ time about that – I'm still finding my way around.
I have got some goals, but I won’t share them just yet. There are projects I’d like to get off the ground, but I need to run them by the BID board when we meet on Thursday.
'Pulling in the same direction'
Another obvious question is how transferrable lessons learned in Stockton, an industrial town on a broad river, will be to Harrogate, a well-heeled spa town. But Mr Maxwell is confident that any differences between the roles will be outweighed by the similarities. He said:
The challenges are the same, in that we need to help the high streets in a changing and evolving environment.
It’s not necessarily about tourism, or industry, or business – it's about relationship-building. It’s about getting to know people, and bringing them together so they’re all pulling in the same direction.
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