We’re writing to 20,000 businesses in Edinburgh to help them to safely reopen as lockdown restrictions continue to ease.
We’ve collated a large amount of very useful information on our website to help everyone play their part in stopping the spread of the virus with lots of health and safety tips and guidance on physical distancing for businesses.
There’s also advice on speaking to your neighbours to help businesses when applying for a licence for tables and chairs and a handy checklist for businesses to use.
Any businesses with specific issues should contact the appropriate department in the Council for advice direct.
The latest communication highlighting all of the practical help on our web pages, follows the support we’ve given to around 8,000 local businesses to get grant funding and we’ve paid out over £104m in business support grants since lockdown began. We’ve also been providing tailored support such as switching to online platforms, diversification strategies, HR, flexible working and crisis planning through Business Gateway Edinburgh.
Adam McVey, Council Leader, said: “Small and local businesses are the lifeblood of our city and we’ve quite rightly put a huge amount of work into supporting them to reopen safely as restrictions are eased in the next phase of lockdown. Since March, we’ve paid out £104m in business support grants so it’s great news that many businesses can now reopen. They need to do so safely though so our handy web pages and checklist have been designed to offer as much practical support as we possibility can. There’s also been a lot of work done by our regulatory team to make licensing more flexible for businesses.”
Cammy Day, Depute Leader, said: “We’ve been reacting to a very challenging situation since lockdown began in March. Our teams have been working extremely hard to support businesses throughout this pandemic, offering financial help when they needed it and now we’re working with businesses to make sure they can reopen safely with all of the right measures in place to meet government guidance. The situation is changing day-by-day at the moment so we’d really appreciate everyone’s patience as we help businesses work through all of the logistics required to continue to keep everyone safe now and in the future."