Councillor Tudor Evans Leader of Plymouth City Council, and portfolio holder for Economic Development, shares an update on the support that the Council has delivered to businesses this week, and the focus for the coming week.
Resurgam
At Cabinet this week I shared our plans for the city’s economic recovery programme and how we’re planning to help Plymouth’s businesses get back to work through Resurgam – a programme to oversee recovery across all sectors. Before lockdown there were £300million worth of development projects being delivered with a pipeline of £1billion, and we’re planning to build on these existing opportunities to support our city recovery. Read more here
Business grants
Last weekend the Government announced an additional discretionary fund to accommodate certain small businesses previously outside of the scope of the business grant fund scheme. We are currently awaiting further guidance from Government in how the local authority can allocate and process these grants. We are working as quickly as we can to be able to announce details of who will be eligible and how these grants can be applied for.
This is a step in the right direction to support businesses who are in great need of support, and a positive result from our lobbying. However this fund is not anticipated to be able to support all businesses in need, and so our lobbying efforts will continue. As soon as we have information available about these grants we’ll share across all of our channels.
Our work to track down businesses who haven’t yet applied for their business grants has continued this week with just over 500 eligible businesses now remaining who have not yet applied. We have continued to make great progress, with over 3,197 business grant applications received and over £37.5 million in grant payments paid out directly to Plymouth businesses.
Business support
The Economic Development team has been working across all sectors to provide business support and signposting to businesses wherever possible. This week we were pleased to welcome the announcement of funding for zoos and aquariums, funding for the tourism sector DMO’s and for the widening of the CBILS scheme to allow educational establishments to apply for financial support.
We’ve been continuing to work with our partners to communicate the available support to businesses, and will be watching the Prime Minister’s briefing on Sunday about the next phase of lockdown measures and how we can continue to support Plymouth businesses through this global pandemic.
Shop4Plymouth
Our online marketplace to support local retailers and encourage people to shop locally continues to grow in popularity with well over 150 businesses now listed and using Shop4Plymouth as a way to promote their new ways of working within the Covid-19 social distancing guidelines.
As of today we’ve now reached 90,000 people on social media promoting shopping locally from the comfort and safety of home.
Call4Fish reaches 1million people
Call4Fish has continued to attract lots more national media interest this week and has now reached over 1million people digitally promoting support for fishermen across the country. This initiative started in Plymouth is incredibly important to help support our local fishers and to keep the fishing industry alive.
Our lobbying work has continued this week, with a specific focus on addressing the real hardship being experienced by fishers. We are asking for a scheme to address specific issues such as, support for shell fishing, keeping the supply chain open and a request for Government to step in and regulate the market to set a price for fish.
Lobbying
We were pleased to see that our lobbying to fight for small businesses who have fallen through the gaps of Government support measures has been recognised by Government with the release of an additional discretionary fund for the business grants. But more still needs to be done as this fund won’t cover all businesses who are in need of help. We’re continuing our lobbying efforts with partners to support our small businesses in Plymouth.
We’re also continuing to lobby for improved support and response from private lenders, following up on feedback from businesses applying for the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Schemes that banks are not responding quickly enough in the application process.