Hello, I’m Cllr Tony Dale, Cabinet Member for Economy and Council Transformation. The Prime Minister confirmed last night what the next stage of easing restrictions will look like on the 19 July. However, we know the virus hasn’t gone away completely and businesses still have a responsibility to keep their staff and customers safe. We know that the last 18 months have been very difficult for many businesses and, despite some encouraging signs, the recovery still has a long way to go.
A range of helpful advice is on the gov.uk website and other organisations such as the Federation of Small Businesses have also produced their own guides which are available online.
This newsletter tells of some of the initiatives which are underway from a range of partners to help businesses to make up lost ground. As always, if there is anything we can do to help please get in touch. Encourage other businesses to sign up for Business Matters, which you can do here.
Cotswold District Council has been allocated just over £81,000 from the Government’s Welcome Back Fund, which is supported by the European Regional Development Fund. This to support the recovery of town centres across the District. The Council’s Cabinet has approved the use of the funds for a number of initiatives including physical improvements to town centres, promotional campaigns, dealing with vacant shop units and looking at creating a ‘virtual high street’ to support businesses to trade digitally.
The District Council has sought ideas from Town Councils on what the physical improvements to town centres should be but is also keen to hear from businesses.
If you have any suggestions please click on the below link.
GFirst LEP Education and Skills Team would be very grateful if you could take a few minutes to complete the below Skills Survey for Gloucestershire. Your responses will be used to help inform the Skills Strategy for Gloucestershire and will help local skills and training providers to better meet the needs of your and other organisations.
The A417 Missing Link is an important landscape led road project that will improve road safety, reduce traffic congestion, and improve connectivity for road users and local communities, while unlocking economic growth in Gloucestershire and beyond.
Highways England has submitted its plans for the A417 Missing Link project, which has now been accepted by the Planning Inspectorate for examination.
The examination and decision-making process will take around a year. Further information about this process and how people can get involved can be found on the Planning Inspectorate’s website
To find out more about the project click on the link below:
The Farming in Protected Landscapes funding programme has launched in the Cotswolds. The application window for the programme opened last week, and grants of up to £250k are available for farmer-led projects that benefit nature, climate, people, and place.
Find out more by clicking the button below, and please get in touch to discuss your ideas and request an application form: farming@cotswoldsaonb.org.uk
Cotswold Tourism is asking businesses to file in a short business impact survey, that will help them fully understand the impacts of Covid-19 on our local area and will feed into our annual tourism statistics. This will be used to support you as local businesses and help to demonstrate how you have been impacted by the pandemic.
All responses are anonymous so no individual businesses can be identified. To complete the survey please click on the link below:
UK Hospitality - represents the broad hospitality sector – covering everything from bars, coffee shops, contract catering, hotels, nightclubs, visitor attractions and other leisure venues
Cotswold Taste - not for profit co-operative providing advice, business, marketing and promotional support to its members, food chain producers and support businesses
Cotswold Tourism - is a partnership of businesses serving the visitor economy sector and local authorities
Summary of business support
The government's business support website sets out the full range of business support measures that have been made available to UK businesses and employees.
Please forward this email to others who might find this useful and encourage them to sign up to further updates.You can access previous editions of this newsletter too.
Our council Coronavirus web pages have updates about business support, communities and leisure, bins and recycling, council meetings, planning, building and council news.
We hope you found this newsletter useful. We would like them to be as relevant as possible so please let us know what you think and don’t forget to send us your news to press@cotswold.gov.uk
Hello, I’m Cllr Tony Dale, Cabinet Member for Economy and Council Transformation. The Prime Minister confirmed last night what the next stage of easing restrictions will look like on the 19 July. However, we know the virus hasn’t gone away completely and businesses still have a responsibility to keep their staff and customers safe. We know that the last 18 months have been very difficult for many businesses and, despite some encouraging signs, the recovery still has a long way to go. 
