Celebration was in the air last week as Richmond’s new business district was launched.

About 100 members of the business community attended the official opening of Be Richmond, the town’s newly-formed Business Improvement District (BID).

The launch of Be Richmond, a business-led partnership set up to improve and enhance the town centre, was held at the Bingham Hotel on September 14 and showcased some of the plans set out by for the next five years.

Be Richmond chairman and Bingham Hotel general manager Erik Kervaon spoke at the event about some of the flagship projects the BID will deliver under the theme “Live, Work, Explore”.

As examples of what the BID had achieved before the launch, he highlighted a free recycling scheme, procurement services, additional street cleaning and the funding of a new online crime reporting system, ‘Facewatch’.

Richmond Park MP Zac Goldsmith told the audience it was vital the town had “a strong lobbying body” in order to compete with neighbouring retail centres such as Kingston and Twickenham.

He said: “As local MP I fully support the BID.

“I have already seen at first hand the power of this collective.

“Only this week we have discussed additional security initiatives with the Met Police, measures that businesses said that they wanted when the BID balloted in 2016.”