Changes To Hospitality Restrictions Speaking in the Scottish Parliament today, the First Minister has outlined new levels framework that will increase the opportunity for hospitality businesses to operate during different levels of COVID-19 restrictions.
Under the new system set out by the Scottish Government, hospitality premises may sell alcohol indoors with a main meal up to 8pm at level two, enabling the service of an early evening meal.
At present, hospitality premises outside the central belt cannot serve alcohol indoors and must close indoors at 6pm.
At level three – equivalent to the current restrictions in the central belt – the definition of cafes will be removed, enabling all hospitality premises to operate in the daytime, up to 6pm, without the sale of alcohol.
Hotels and other accommodation will continue to be able to serve evening meals to residents.
The expansion of the hospitality provisions within the new levels system takes effect from Monday 2nd November and will be kept under review as the spread of the virus hopefully stabilises.
The Scottish Government has also committed to taking forward a range of additional mitigations suggested by the industry with the sector, as well as continuing to consider how low level background sound in hospitality premises can be safely managed.
New Business Support For Nightclubs And Soft Play Nightclubs and soft play centres that have been closed by law since March are to benefit from targeted funding.
One-off grants of up to £50,000 will be available to businesses in both sectors through the COVID-19 Contingency Fund. Grants will be based on rateable value.
Businesses operating multiple premises will be eligible to claim one full grant plus grants of up to 75% on subsequent properties.
Guidance will be published this week to help soft play centres prepare for re-opening when it is safe to do so. The guidance has been developed in partnership with clinical experts, regulators, trade unions and industry representatives.
Funding has been made available for soft play centres and nightclubs through the £11 million COVID-19 Contingency Fund. This is part of the package of more than £40 million support for businesses affected by the latest COVID-19 restrictions.
Premises will not be eligible if they have opened at all since March – for example by changing their licence to open as a pub – and awards may be reduced if companies successfully apply to the Cultural Organisations and Venue Recovery Fund.
Covid-19 Strategic Framework - SCC Feedback To Scottish Government SCC has been involved in providing insight and feedback on Scottish Government’s new Strategic Framework: a new five-tiered system, which has increasing lockdown restrictions depending on the designated alert level.
As a Network, we galvanised quickly and were able to provide real-time feedback on our various calls with Scottish Government.
SCC had a call with Cabinet Secretary Fiona Hyslop yesterday afternoon, which was a constructive and open discussion. SCC raised a number of issues of importance to the Network on the call, including:
As part of the call, SCC agreed to submit detailed feedback to the Cabinet Secretary. We incorporated the wide range of business feedback we received from the Network, through meetings, phone calls, emails and surveys.
We are pleased to enclose the submission SCC has sent to the Cabinet Secretary. In addition, SCC has also sent the submission to the Leaders of the other political parties; Scottish Conservatives, Scottish Labour, Scottish Lib Dems and Scottish Greens ahead of the parliamentary debate and vote on the strategic framework later today at the Scottish Parliament.
SCC is following the parliamentary debate (ongoing at time of writing) and will issue a statement in response to the vote.
SCC Response To Support For Nightclubs And Soft Play Responding, Dr Liz Cameron, Chief Executive of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, said:
“This new funding support for clubs and soft play centres provides an essential lifeline to important areas of the economy that have forced to remain closed since the start of lockdown.
"These businesses are facing great difficulties and this support from the COVID-19 Contingency Fund addresses some of the gaps we have identified in business support schemes so far. It almost goes without saying that it is vital these grants are now rolled out as quickly as possible.
“It is very positive that, at last, we will have guidance on when soft play centres might be able to reopen. Not only will it be a great boon for parents and carers of young people, but the sector has been Covid-safe for some time and deserves the opportunity to begin trading again.
“We urge the Scottish Government to continue to work with these businesses to support the safe reopening of soft play centres, to protect the jobs and livelihoods within the sector.”
New Support To Grow Scottish Geospatial Sector The UK Government Geospatial Commission, working with Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government, is helping to establish the new Scottish Geospatial Network Integrator, with a £200,000 joint investment.
Geospatial data, which is data linked to location, underpins our public services such as emergency planning, building our homes, protecting our environment, supporting our transport and helping our security services to keep us safe.
The Scottish Geospatial Network Integrator will enhance the use of location-based data across Scotland, including:
The new project will help to unlock part of the estimated £11 billion of value to the UK’s economy each year from geospatial services.
Inward Investment Plan Published A new, targeted inward investment plan has been launched that aims to further internationalise Scotland’s economy.
The plan represents a fundamental shift in approach and focuses efforts on nine areas of opportunity where Scotland has global strengths and which offer significant future prospects.
Independent research suggests that the sectors identified are also likely to be among the most resilient to the impact of COVID-19. They include energy transition, health technology, the space sector and digital financial and business services.
Priority will be given to investors who can build local supply chains, provide new skills and invest in research. There will be an emphasis on the creation of regional clusters to encourage the spread of investment across Scotland.
The Scottish Government will focus resource on strategic investments, aiming ultimately to allocate up to £20 million a year.
It is estimated the plan has the potential to increase GDP by £4.2 billion, boost exports by £2.1 billion over the next two decades and add up to £680 million a year to government revenues.
The revised approach seeks to deliver 100,000 jobs over the next decade.
Eden Court Theatre Reopens Inverness Chamber of Commerce is delighted to announce that long-standing Members, Eden Court Theatre & Cinema, is opening their doors again on Thursday after 226 days following the onset of Covid-19 impacting on the Highlands.
Following a massive effort from the Chief Executive, James Mackenzie-Blackman, and his whole team, they are opening their two cinemas for a brilliant programme of world-cinema and the best of live performance from around the world on the big screen.
Integral to their opening is Eden Court’s use of the #ProtectHighland service which ICC developed to support all of its business community and third sector organisations to manage their compliance with the guidelines around visitor and guest registration.
Eden Court’s team provided invaluable feedback as ICC developed the #ProtectHighland service and was its first registered user.
This service is free for all users and has been provided in association with Inverness BID, NairnConnects BID, NC500 and Visit Inverness Loch Ness Tourism BID.
It’s easy to register and use and you can sign up via the below link. Congratulations to James and his team and good luck.
Scottish Chambers Of Commerce Test And Protect Test and Protect is a simple way for businesses to collect customer contact details. It provides businesses with a toolkit for easy implementation, including onsite check-in posters and FAQ documents, all branded with individual Chamber branding.
For customers, it offers a simple check-in process consistent across multiple venues with two-touch check-in when registered.
This also removes the GDPR liability for a business as their relevant Chamber stores check-in data for 21 days then it is auto deleted. If NHS Test and Protect ask a business for customer data, it is requested from their local Chamber.
The Chamber has a ‘superuser’ dashboard and can download data from the system by venue, date and time frame. This data can then be sent to NHS Test and Protect.
Once signed up, businesses can download posters and table stands with their own unique QR and CODE as well as an FAQ document to display on premises. They can also download their unique QR code to design into their own posters.
The business dashboard shows cumulative (anonymised) check-ins, number of check-ins in the last 24 hours and allows a business to search for a total number of check-ins for any period in the last 21 days (this enables them to sense check if their staff are correctly collecting data).
For more details, please click on the below link.
National Mentoring Day - 27th October 2020 National Mentoring Day was launched to recognise and celebrate the benefits of mentoring and takes place today.
The day was created by Chelsey Baker, an award-winning business mentor to help encourage and celebrate mentoring in all its forms.
If you are keen to be mentored or to provide your time to be a mentor, please visit the Scottish Chambers mentoring site via the below link.
Get Behind Scotland Loves Local Scotland Loves Local is a Scotland-wide campaign encouraging all of us to get behind the people and businesses at the heart of our town centres and high streets.
The £1 million ‘Scotland Loves Local’ fund will provide grants of between £500 and £5,000 to hundreds of projects to promote town centre and online businesses. The funding is NOT for businesses, but Chambers, not for profits and BIDs can apply.
The funding aims to support small scale improvements that will help motivate people to shop, eat and relax within their community whilst ensuring public health safety.
Grants can be put towards providing safe shopping information for residents and tourists, the installation of public health infrastructure such as protective screens, physical distancing markers, hand sanitising equipment and PPE.
Virtual Trade Missions To Shandong And Inner Mongolia Scottish Chambers of Commerce is pleased to invite applications from any Scottish business for these virtual outward trade missions to Shandong and Inner Mongolia.
These missions will build on our existing strong business relationships and are open to any business based in Scotland - not only Chamber members.
The events take place on 17th and 24th November and will introduce the main socio-economic profile of the regions and highlight the opportunities for B2B trade.
SCC will introduce the main participants and explain the collaborative support available from the Scottish Government, SDI and SCC and will highlight the main opportunities for B2B trade connections.
Following the conference, a matching process will take place to identify suitable business contacts for you based on your specific business objectives.
This will be followed by a series of one-to-one B2B meetings (and, if helpful, sectoral based webinars) over several days with our counterparts.
The intention is to follow up with trade missions in 2021 when travel restrictions are lifted.
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