Support Offered Through Covid-19

Delivered by BID Leamington

In March 2020, businesses faced huge uncertainty as they were told to close their doors. Some grants had to be applied for, whilst other funding was paid out, new regulations had to be complied with, it was a time of enormous confusion and stress.

Throughout this devastating time, BID Leamington was interpreting, translating and communicating the latest announcements so businesses could easily understand what they were eligible for and how they needed to respond. Our communications became a regular and trusted source of information for many businesses that didn’t know where else to turn, particularly through the enormous amount of change being imposed.

In the meantime, we were also lobbying central government through our national business networks to secure support for those sectors that had been left behind, by joining campaigns such as #RaiseTheBar and the #BounceBackBetter.

Providing Expert Information and Clarity

During this ‘unprecedented’ time, BID Leamington re-focussed all our activity to respond to the needs of our businesses.

New regulations and ways of working needed to be understood and adopted at a rapid rate. BID Leamington produced weekly updates that were emailed to hundreds of businesses and posted online, aimed at decoding regulations, business support and grants advice – and team was available and ready to answer questions on the other end of the phone.

BID Leamington also hosted a number of free on-line workshops with sector experts to help businesses understand the wide variety of changes that were being introduced. Answering questions such as: what is furlough? who is eligible? how to claim? through a live Q & A webinar with local HR company Absolute Works provided answers enabling businesses to move through these challenging times with clarity. The BID team also secured other critical support including financial, legal, and health and wellbeing advice from partner businesses and organisations.

Building consumer confidence

BID Leamington initiated a number of campaigns to help build consumer confidence during this time to help footfall return when businesses were able to open.

Some of these projects gained us great publicity such as our Social Distancing Flowers and Spa Stars.

These were consumer based campaigns in partnership with the business community to keep everyone safe and expressing gratitude to some wonderful people.