Former Royal Marines commando Rich Jones is the new chairman of Stratford BID

RICH Jones is a former commando who did stints in both Afghanistan and Iraq with the Royal Marines. He later went into risk management which some might say, combined with his military training, is the minimum qualification necessary for his latest task.

That task is as chairman of Stratford BID – or Business Improvement District – the organisation that represents around 430 member enterprises in the town and which has not had the happiest of experiences in recent times.

Its most immediate crisis was only a few weeks ago when Diane Mansell, the BID manager, departed in a sudden resignation after only around a year in the job. In a long letter cataloguing an array of complaints about her experiences, Ms Mansell accused the BID board of having “micromanaged every single decision that has been made throughout my time here” and claimed the board’s style had made “future management of services impossible”.