Harrogate BID Newsletter July 2025
Hello everyone and welcome to the latest edition of our newsletter as we move further into a busy summer!
Our Floral Summer of Celebration displays are still in place around town, continuing to promote Harrogate as a floral destination and adding to our town’s already renowned heritage. We were pleased to welcome the Yorkshire in Bloom judges to guide them along the trail in the hopes of claiming further prizes during the awards later in the year!
Our popular Lego Trail also kicked off last week, bringing a safari feel into Harrogate over the next few weeks. The trail is one of our most highly anticipated events of the year, attracting tens of thousands of people into town increasing both footfall and spend for our business community.
You may spot our roaming street entertainers over the coming weekends, bringing comedy, wit and performance for local people and visitors to enjoy.
Our teams on the street have been busy ensuring our town centre remains a safe, clean and welcoming place to live, work and visit. If you’re out and about, you’ll spot our Street Rangers carrying our maintenance work, including sprucing up benches around the town centre, along with reactive tasks on a daily basis.
Yours sincerely,
Simon Midgley
BID Chair
BID launches ‘Recruitment Pack’ for CEO role at organisation
Are you passionate about championing place, business and community in a thriving destination town?
Harrogate BID is seeking a dynamic, strategic and hands-on Chief Executive Officer to lead the delivery of its ambitious 2024–2028 business plan.
Representing around 500 town centre businesses, the BID plays a vital role in promoting, enhancing and shaping Harrogate as a vibrant, successful and attractive place to live, work and visit.
Roaming street entertainment returns to Harrogate bringing comedy, wit and performance
Harrogate BID is delighted to once again fully fund roaming street entertainment for the North Yorkshire town.
Providing entertainment, wit and comedy for a series of weekends over the summer, the actors are pleased to bring their performance back to Harrogate.
The BID team are pleased to once again work alongside MarkMark productions to create a vibrant town centre and form the best first impression possible for any visitors to Harrogate.
BID thrilled to launch Harrogate Floral Summer of Celebration 2025
The BID team were thrilled to officially launch the Harrogate Floral Summer of Celebration 2025.
The floral trail, which has become a staple in the Business Improvement District’s (BID) event calendar, attracts thousands of people into the town centre every year helping to support both the local business community and economy.
For its fourth year in 2025, a total of eight dazzling displays appeared in different locations to brighten up the town centre – with perfect photo opportunities for those taking part to create magnificent memories in the North Yorkshire town.
Harrogate Lego Trail launches in town centre with ‘Safari’ theme
Harrogate BID are delighted to officially launch this year’s Lego Trail in the town as the ‘Safari’ themed models have now been installed in different organisations.
The popular trail, organised by the Business Improvement District for the fourth time this year, attracts tens of thousands of visitors into the town centre, encouraging an increase in both footfall and spend to support the business community.
Over a dozen displays are now in place, featuring safari animals and vehicles, in different organisations around Harrogate town centre – and will remain on location until Tuesday, August 26th.
BID supports new 1,000 piece puzzle to promote Harrogate to wider audience
Harrogate BID is pleased to support a new 1,000 piece puzzle project to help promote the North Yorkshire town to a wider audience.
The new jigsaw features a picture of Harrogate’s war memorial, known as the Cenotaph, and was officially launched in the Games Crusade store in the town centre this week.
The BID was delighted partner with the local store and the UK-based ‘All Jigsaw Puzzles’ organisation for the design – with a similar project delivered in 2024 – offering hours of entertainment to people of all ages.
BID attends Great Yorkshire Show to promote Harrogate as must visit destination
The Harrogate BID team were excited to be in attendance at the Great Yorkshire Show this week to promote the town as a must-visit destination.
The Business Improvement District (BID) team chose to host their own stand at the show this year, with local organisations including the Turkish Baths, Three’s A Crowd, Richard Grafton, The Crown Hotel and Neuhaus Chocolates joining the team on the stall.
The BID team were at the Great Yorkshire Show to offer promotion of Harrogate and its town centre to a wider audience and offer return in investment to its BID Members, as well as promoting the footfall and spend increasing campaigns it hosts, in line with the ‘A Vibrant Town’ objective in its term 2 Business Plan.
Harrogate Summer Social 2025
The BID team were pleased to host the annnual Summer Social at Mayfair Pub on Monday August 11th for an evening of relaxed networking in our town centre!
It’s always a great opportunity to meet new people and catch up with old friends over a drink and a bite to eat.
We’re pleased to work alongside the Harrogate District Chamber of Commerce to once again deliver this event for our town. If you would like to attend, please email us on info@harrogatebid.co.uk
Harrogate BID proud to claim Chamber’s President’s Cup
Our Street Rangers have been working on giving benches in Harrogate town centre a new lease of life!
Sam and Darren have been using our in-house equipment on benches around town to ensure they look the best they can.
Here you can see the difference before and after their work. We think it looks great!
Many visitors to our place use these benches on a daily basis, so it’s important they’re maintained to the best standard to make a top first impression.
Yorkshire Water investment in Harrogate
On the 26 August, Yorkshire Water will be starting work to replace 1.2km’s of clean water pipes in the Harrogate area.
They expect to take around 6 months to complete the project and are currently working with partner MGroup, and the local highways team to plan our programme and minimise any potential disruption for the community.
There will be 2 teams working simultaneously though Harrogate starting on Ripon Road moving on to Swan Road, Crescent Road, Montpellier Mews, Montpellier Parade, Cambridge Street, The Prince of Whales Roundabout and finally on to Back Granville Road.
If you would like to find out more, the team are hosting a community drop-in on 31 July 2025 at St Peters Church, HG1 1PB between 3pm and 6.30pm.
All residents and businesses that may be impacted by the work are invited to attend.
BID blog on busy summer months in Harrogate
The summer season is always jam-packed for us at Harrogate BID – and this year has so far been no exception!
Whether we’re building the perfect props for the Floral Summer of Celebration, planning the magnificent models for the Lego Trail, or supporting the design and creation of super street art projects, our team are always on the ball to deliver events, campaigns and services for the good of Harrogate.
Restaurant Week returning to Harrogate
We are delighted to announce the return of Harrogate Restaurant Week for October 2025, in partnership with Visit North Yorkshire.
Following the format of restaurant weeks in many other towns and cities around the UK, the promotion is designed to help you to attract new customers and create regular repeat customers by creating the perfect opportunity for restaurants, cafes and bars to attract local residents and visitors to try out somewhere new at an affordable price.
Taking place week commencing the 6th October 2025, the cost of participation for all restaurant, bar and café businesses located within the Harrogate BID area, has been covered by Harrogate BID’s sponsorship, meaning that there will be no charge to take part.
Simply complete this online form with details of your offers and Visit North Yorkshire will do the rest: Harrogate Restaurant Week Sign-up
HUQ update from July 2025
The latest figures from HUQ show us that the footfall in July 2025 was up on the same period last year!
Looking at the data, we can see that the total footfall for the month was 1.56 million – just over 70,000 higher than the total footfall in July 2024.
We can see that visitors travelled to Harrogate from areas including Middlesborough, Neston, Bath, Stockport and London.
Meanwhile, some of Harrogate’s hot spots for the month have been highlighted as Station Parade, Cambridge Road and along Union Street near to the Jubilee Car Park.
If you would like to see a specific data set from HUQ, please email us on info@harrogatebid.co.uk