The boss of a north-east commerce group has called for additional Covid-19 funding to help traders through a “hard winter” claiming “the reality on the street is that we’re losing businesses”.
Adrian Watson, chief executive of Aberdeen Inspired, last night urged the UK and Scottish Government to provide a vital stimulus package for hard-hit retailers and hospitality firms, which he claims “need support like we’ve never needed it before”.
First minister Nicola Sturgeon announced a full national lockdown yesterday in response to the spread of a new, more infectious variant of Covid-19.
It will see the temporary closure of many non-essential shops and businesses.
However it is feared that, despite the extension of the furlough scheme until March some smaller north-east businesses may not survive.
Mr Watson said: “It’s going to be a hard winter for many businesses and I would ask that government look at what more support can be provided in terms of helping get to the recovery stage, which we hope is around Easter with the new vaccine coming online.
“But it’s going to be an awfully hard challenge for businesses and as much support as possible needs to be channelled towards them.
“I understand there is only so much money to go around, but if there was ever a good case it’s Aberdeen because we’ve seen more projected redundancies and we’ve been hit particularly hard as cities go – we need that stimulus and support like we’ve never needed it before.”
Co-leader of Aberdeen city council, Douglas Lumsden, also said he feared that without increased support Aberdeen, in particular, will see “more and more businesses that don’t make it through this pandemic”.
He said: “I think the longer this continues there is a greater risk that many of those businesses that close will never open up again.
“We’ve seen the impact locally on a number of hotels in Aberdeen since March and we’ve seen big names like Debenhams and Arcadia Group going to the wall and that’s all bad news for the city centre
“ I worry about what the high street is going to look like with so many businesses having to close over this period – traders in the north-east need some sort of certainty as they need to protect as many jobs as possible.”
In response to the new measures announced by the First Minister, the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) pushed for already announced schemes to support companies to start paying out and for the Scottish Government to devise more ways to ensure firms are protected during the new lockdown.
Andrew McRae, the Scotland policy chairman of the FSB, said: “Help for Scottish business can no longer be a dollar short and a day late. For a start, the glut of new support schemes announced at the end of last year need to start delivering cash to firms.
“So far, few of these initiatives have paid out a penny. Then ministers need to urgently look at new ways to get money to the local firms who’ve borne the business brunt of this crisis.”
Highlands & Islands MSP Maree Todd said: “Undoubtedly, there are difficult times ahead, but we are at the beginning of the end of this pandemic.
“As the vaccine programme progresses, normality is in sight, but we need to give the vaccine the time it needs to get ahead and in order to do that, we must slow the virus down.”
