Published on: May 6, 2020
Funding has been secured through the Living Lerwick contract for Realta Events Management to provide a business resilience support service during the Covid-19 renew and recovery phase.
£10,000 has been received from a national Business Improvement District Resilience Fund; £4,000 from Shetland Islands Council Economic Development Service; and £2,000 from Living Lerwick’s own business support funds.
Realta staff are inviting businesses throughout Shetland to take part in an initial 20-30 minute survey of current business operations, and discuss resilience issues as part of this project.
This will help to build up a picture of business health and identify any possible support gaps. Initial conversations will also provide information about goods and services that businesses are currently offering and how the public can safely access these.
Anyone signing up to the support scheme will receive regular information updates and signposting to funding applications and other business support services. The dedicated support service that has been provided to Living Lerwick members to this point, will be available for any Shetland based business.
The development of a ‘virtual’ High Street will allow the public to find details, links, contact information and images of products and services available. This will be kept up to date on the Living Lerwick website to actively encourage the Shetland public to support our local business owners and ‘Think Local First’. The website will be updated in the coming days.
Project Manager, Emma Miller said “As we are currently unable to deliver normal Living Lerwick activities in a socially responsible way; we have put BID operations on hold to allow staff to support hundreds of additional businesses on a one to one basis, while continuing to support our own members.
“I’d like to be clear that this project does not replace the excellent work being done by Business Gateway who are administering grant funding and can give specific operational advice. This is a project to assess the future of business health in Shetland by offering a listening ear; a chance to discuss possible diversification of your business and a platform to promote services.
Any business can book an appointment for a resilience consultation at https://livinglerwick.as.me/ or by calling 07379 765020. For more information you can also email emma@livinglerwick.co.uk