The UK's first city-wide Business Improvement District, benefiting 2,000 firms, could be started in Coventry later this year.
The pioneering initiative would cover companies of all sizes based on business parks, industrial estates and industrial areas.
A BID allows companies in a defined area to work together to improve the environment where they work and trade by deciding what additional services they wish to pay for to improve their locality.
A recent Home Office survey found that although domestic crime is decreasing, business crime is increasing.
And each business crime costs far more than each domestic crime.
The same survey also discovered that co-operative actions reduce business crime by more than 50 per cent but individual company actions have little effect.
Coventry already has one BID covering mainly retail businesses in the city centre - Birmingham has something similar - which is managed by the not-for-profit company CV One.
It has had success in reducing crime and improving cleanliness in particular.
The city-wide BID would be managed by a new not for profit BID company with representatives from the business community, CV One, Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce and Coventry City Council on its board.
It is hoped the new scheme would deliver a range of benefits including reducing business crime through manned CCTV cameras, improving the image of the city, and offering bulk procurement and better IT access by having the resources to place a modern cable and wireless infrastructure across the city.
The BID would also create Business Area Champions to provide hands-on area managers that can work with companies to offer help and assistance as well as resolving issues.
A postal vote on whether to adopt the scheme is expected to take place in November and if a majority of those who vote - both by number and rateable value - approve the proposal, all ratepayers will contribute around £200 plus 1.5 per cent of their business rates to fund the scheme.
Around 100 people attended the official launch of the scheme and Dr Martin Stock-dale, who is managing the project to establish the BID, believes it would provide many benefits.
He said: "Traditionally businesses do not have any direct influence on how their business rate is spent but with the BID system, companies can influence and decide services BID delivers.
"The closest thing to the Coventry-wide BID is in Bolton which covers several industrial estates and business parks and has been piloted for the last year.
"It has proved hugely successful with recorded crime falling by more than 75 per cent. The cost of crime has been reduced by 90 per cent and 163 jobs have also been created.
"But no new BID will work unless it can deliver real value and for almost a year we have had a six-strong team working on the Coventry BID to make sure it can deliver real added-value to local businesses." ..SUPL:
